Burglar picked wrong couple to rob
A burglar thought former CBC anchor Lynne Russell was travelling alone when he jammed a gun into her back and pushed her inside her Albuquerque, N.M., motel room.
But minutes later, the burglar was dead, Russell’s ex-Green Beret husband Chuck de Caro was wounded, and Russell was crediting her life to his steady hand with a concealed pistol.
“The assailant wanted whatever was in my purse, and when he opened fire on Chuck he got it,” she said by text message to the National Post.
The purse had contained a KelTec pocket pistol, which Russell had surreptitiously slipped to her husband during the brief standoff.
Both Russell and de Caro are licensed to carry concealed firearms.
As the woman told a local news station soon after the shooting, “My husband returned fire and he’s a better shot.” De Caro was hit three times, and remains in an Albuquerque hospital.
De Caro had already been hit when he got hold of the pistol, drew it from the purse and fired.
Albuquerque Police initially said the shooting was a clear-cut case of self-defence.
On Thursday, however, police spokesman Tanner Tixier said it was being investigated as a homicide. Police could not be reached before press time for clarification.
Russell was a pioneering anchor with CNN Headline News, working 18 years until her retirement in early 2001.
In the years since, she’s sold hand-stitched lampshades, written novel and lived for a time in Toronto, where she worked as a journalist for CBC, a personality on Toronto radio station CFRB and sold real estate for Royal LePage.