Thread: Former Sportscaster Caught in Nogales Violence

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Former sportscaster caught in Nogales violence

Posted - 2/12/2010 at 7:20PM

TUCSON - A UA basketball commentator got a terrifying first-hand experience of violence along the U.S.-Mexico border Monday after returning home from a family road trip.

"You hear about it, but you never think it's going to happen," says Francisco Romero, a former reporter for the Spanish-language station Telemundo. "But now it's a different story."

Romero was waiting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border after visiting family in Magdalena, Mexico when his trip quickly took a turn for the worst.

"All of a sudden we hear a couple of shots, and then four seconds after that we hear a lot of shots - like a machine gun shooting," he says. "My wife looked at me and I looked at her. Our daughter was sleeping in the back, and all we could see was the smoke from the shots."

Romero, a Nogales native, says that shots rang out for several minutes, just 150 yards away from the border. All he could see were bullets hitting a wall nearby, but he couldn't see the shooters.

There was no way to escape what was happening, he says. All they could do was take cover and wait.

"My first thought was protecting my wife and my daughter," he recounts. "As a former reporter I wanted to be in the action. I wanted to see the shots, but as a father and as a husband, it's the last thing you want to be at."

A video available on YouTube.com shows the chaos taking place. Romero says that this was the first time he's ever witnessed this type of violence so close to the border.

"You feel like your hands are tied," he says. "You're just waiting for the moment to end. There's a mix of feelings that run through your mind in a short period of time that seems to take an eternity."

He's glad his family made it out safe, Romero says, but the next time he makes his visit to Mexico, he will be prepared for the unexpected.

"We'll be a little bit more careful," he says. "Maybe we'll have a plan A and plan B."

http://www.kvoa.com/news/sports-comment ... irst-hand/

He's glad his family made it out safe, Romero says, but the next time he makes his visit to Mexico, he will be prepared for the unexpected.

"We'll be a little bit more careful," he says. "Maybe we'll have a plan A and plan B."

Here's some help:

Plan A - Stay out of mexico.

Plan B - Stay out of mexico.