KMSP reporter Iris Pérez is quitting TV news. The decision, she says, is due to the fact that she is still undergoing a “lengthy” recovery from a traumatic brain injury she suffered in 2018.
“For the better part of a decade, I worked tirelessly to deliver ‘journalism with a capital J’ while at the same time amplifying underrepresented, marginalized voices like my own—from the newsroom and when reporting live in the field,” she wrote on social media.
Pérez, who has also served as a fill-in anchor at the station, had been on a medical leave of absence for more than a year after she and a photojournalist were hit by a distracted driver while on their way to an interview, Bring Me the News reports.
In February 2020, the reporter posted an update to Facebook sharing that since the crash, she had been experiencing “a rollercoaster of vision issues, dizziness, photophobia, chronic neck and shoulder pain, depression, fatigue, insomnia, etc.”
Pérez joined Minneapolis Fox-owned station KMSP in 2012. She said only time will tell what’s next, but that she will make sure “it’s exciting, it helps people and, most importantly, is in line with values I know we share.”