Reporter’s terror live on-air covering Louisville protests: ‘I’m getting shot – they’re aiming at us’

Chilling new footage from the US protests shows a reporter and her cameraman targeted by police officers live on-air.

Chilling footage broadcast on a US TV network shows police officers appearing to target a reporter and her cameraman, live on-air.

The pair were both hit repeatedly by rubber bullets, and viewers at home got a “bird’s eye view of what it’s like to get shot” as one officer pointed his weapon directly into the camera.

Wave 3 News reporter Kaitlin Rust was reporting live on the ground at protests against police brutality in Louisville, Kentucky when officers appeared to target her and the cameraman.

Kaitlin Rust on the ground in Louisville.

“We’re behind the line,” Rust told the anchors back in the studio, one of whom told her to “keep going – and go where you’ve got to go”.

Within seconds, Rust could be heard screaming in terror off-camera.

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“I’m getting shot!” she yelled. “Rubber bullets, rubber bullets, it’s those pepper bullets, I’m OK,” she said.

“Who are they aiming that at?” asked one of the anchor.

“At us! Directly at us!” she said, as one officer raised his weapon and pointed it directly at the camera.

A police officer points his weapon directly at the camera.

“Why are they doing that? Do they not know – obviously they see the camera,” said the anchor.

As Rust and her cameraman retreated from the police, she explained that the officers were ordering her to move farther away: “I guess we were behind their line, a little too close for comfort,” she said. She said her cameraman, James, had been hit by “five or six” of the rubber bullets.

“We’re looking through James’s camera, as the officer is aiming directly into James’s camera, so we just got a bird’s eye view of what it looks like to get shot,” said one of the anchors.

A protester yells at an Atlanta Police Department Officer after they both were hit with pepper spray during a protest in Atlanta, Friday, May 29, 2020. Picture: Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP

The shocking on-air encounter comes after CNN reporter Omar Jimenez was arrested live on air during protests in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd.

A producer and camera operator were also placed in handcuffs.

In extraordinary live footage of the arrest, Jimenez could be heard explaining to the officers the four of them are “one team.”

“We are getting out of your way. Just let us know. Wherever you want us to go we will go.”

The team is surrounded by heavily armed state patrol officers who place the reporter in handcuffs.

“Do you mind telling me why I’m under arrest?” Jimenez says calmly.

An anchor from the studio says “this is an American television reporter … being led away by police officers.”