TV reporter robbed at Gunpoint Live on Air

A reporter who was mugged at gunpoint during an attack on live TV outside a football stadium in Ecuador shared images of his ordeal online.

Diego Ordinola was reporting to DirecTV Sports from outside the Isidro Romero Carbo Monumental Stadium in Guayaquil – Ecuador’s largest city – on February 12, when a routine TV attack was abruptly interrupted by a man holding a gun.

Wearing a baseball cap and a face mask, the thief approached Ordinola and aimed the gun at him, while demanding that he hand over his phone and wallet. The thief then returned the gun to the cameraman and the film crew, with a member of the crew handing over his phone.

The terrible exchange was recorded as the camera focused on Ordinola continued to rotate. The footage was later sent to the reporter’s Twitter account.

“We can’t even work silently, it happened at 1 pm outside the Monumental Stadium,” said Ordinola as the video’s caption, which was seen almost 370,000 times at the time of writing.

“@PoliceEcuador promised to find these criminals.”

The thief ran after obtaining the phone, with images showing him jumping on the back of a motorcycle before quickly fleeing the scene.

The theft video was shared thousands of times and Ordinola received several messages of support, both from colleagues and the general public.

“Thank you all for your messages of solidarity, thank you very much,” he wrote on Twitter. “We are going to unite to eradicate crime in Ecuador.”

The Isidro Romero Carbo Monumental Stadium, located in the parish of Tarqui, in the north of Guayaquil, is the largest stadium in Ecuador.

The home of Barcelona SC hosted five 1993 Copa America games, including the final in which Argentina defeated Mexico 2-1.

In 2019, the United States Department of State’s Travel Advisory described Guayaquil as “seriously at risk of crime”.

A report by the Overseas Security Advisory Council noted that while the number of home intrusions and armed robberies decreased in the previous year, the number of car thefts and homicides has increased.

The rates of apprehension and conviction of criminals remained very low “due to limited police and judicial resources”.

The report urged visitors to “exercise extreme caution in downtown Guayaquil and in the southern part of the city”, especially in tourist spots that “are targets of criminals”, despite being well patrolled by the local police.