A Pennsylvania realtor is suing KYW for emotional distress and defamation, claiming the Philadelphia station aired a “preposterous and knowingly false story” about her, the Philadelphia Daily News reports.
The suit names anchor Chris May, reporter Walt Hunter, news director Susan Schiller and account executive Kim Papay as defendants. Straub says she lost her job and was “effectively run out of town” after the story aired:
According to the suit, filed last week in Philadelphia, house sitter Eric Welsch, who uses the Twitter handle “Gore God,” gave the station a video that showed a “blurry, yet clearly male figure” vandalizing a “For Sale” sign and placing “animal corpses” on the property.
Advertisement“Anyone who knows Ms. Straub is well aware of her fear of mice and rats, making these claims that she placed dead corpses on the neighbor’s property all the more absurd,” the suit states.
Straub is friends with CBS3 reporter Lesley Van Arsdall, the suit continues. After Hunter contacted Straub for comment, she reached out to Van Arsdall, who then watched the video and told the defendants that Straub was not in it and was not involved in the incident.