Here’s a headline you couldn’t have found in Saturday’s Washington Post: “Washington Post Deliverer Almost Kills Professor, Leaves Him Unconscious on Sidewalk.” The Post carried a little story buried on B-3 inside the Metro section blandly headlined “Man arrested in attack on professor.”
You had to wait until paragraph six of Peter Hermann’s story to find the Post tried to spin furiously that this thug putting a professor into a coma wasn’t really a Post employee:
The Washington Post confirmed that [suspect James] Brown is a “casual laborer” whose job was to jump off trucks and put papers into single-sale boxes around the city. He is not an employee of The Post but was hired by agents who are contracted by the newspaper.
Other outlets have reported the professor's name is Jason Chambers. This is how it began:
District police on Friday arrested a man in connection with the beating of a 39-year-old part-time George Washington University professor who was found critically injured on a sidewalk near Dupont Circle, according to authorities.
Police said the altercation began as the suspect and co-workers were transferring newspapers from one delivery truck to another about 4:15 a.m. Sunday at S Street and Connecticut Avenue NW.
Police said in an arrest affidavit obtained by The Washington Post that the suspect, identified as James Brown, 38, of Southeast Washington, punched the professor after feeling threatened, checked his pulse and “got back into his truck and began delivering his newspapers, leaving the victim on the sidewalk.”
....His condition could not be ascertained, but police said in the affidavit drawn up Friday that the professor suffered a collapsed lung and severe head trauma and was in a medically induced coma.
