Rant #2,453: Gone

I wake up at 6 a.m. or thereabouts to begin my day, but I was always an early riser, and when I was working, I used to wake up at 4 a.m. to do the things I needed to do before I drove off to work.

When I woke up for work, it was my habit to turn on WCBS Channel 2 News here in New York and both watch and listen to the early news of the day while I read my newspaper.

I preferred Channel 2 News for a variety of reasons, and I am not going to lie about one of the reasons, because I never have shied away from the fact that as a heterosexual male, I am drawn to visuals, and the female reporters on Channel 2 are not only highly talented, but they are as good looking as they come.

I often spoke about that fact when I would run my report on the best-looking reporters on that station, but I did always mention that these women were pretty--yes, they were very, very nice looking--but they were also great at what they did, and after awhile, that was the most important thing, as it should be.

But in the morning at 4 a.m., I guess your mind isn't up yet, and I guess you are looking for eye candy as well as getting the news, so these women fit the bill, as the morning show was populated--and I believe purposely--with one good looking female reporter after another.

Don't tell me that the station didn't do this purposely, because even in the morning, ratings are paramount over anything else/

This leads me to yesterday.

Again, I am not waking up at 4 a.m. anymore, and the news does not go on so early in the morning; in fact, I don't watch WCBS Channel 2 News until about 5 p.m. now, so yesterday, that is when it went on.

And I really finally sat down to watch the news at 6 p.m., after my family and I eat dinner, so that is what I did yesterday.

Dana Tyler anchors that half-hour news show, and yes, she has always fit into the good looking/great talent category. She has been with the station probably about 30 years now, and it is almost as if we have seen her grow up with the station, from a comely young reporter to a mature anchorwoman.

She went about the news of the day, which of course revolved around the coronavirus, but at 6:15 p.m. or so, she broke away from the regular news to make a report so personal that there were noticeably tears coming out of her eyes.

As she tried to hold back those tears, she reported on one of their own, a young reporter by the name of Nina Kapur, who she told us had died at the age of 26 in a moped accident in Brooklyn.

Tyler did not go into details, but the station did a nice tribute to her, showing her doing her thing on the streets of New York. Again, this reporter was extremely talented and also nice looking, but the talent portion was most important, as it should be.

We did not see Tyler again until the end of the broadcast. Her eyes were puffy, and you could see that tears continued to come out of her eyes, no matter how she tried to stop them.

It was just too much.

I did a little Googling to find out more about this tragedy, and evidently the reporter was riding on the back of a Revel-brand moped being driven by an unidentified man, also 26 years old, through the streets of Greenpoint. The vehicle was a rental, one of those rentals you can get around the city.

Anyway, the driver reportedly veered off suddenly for some yet to be determined reason--the New York Post reported that it was to avoid hitting a car--and both he and Kapur flew off the moped. The man only received some minor injuries, but you can assume that Kapur probably landed straight on her head and had no chance.

Other reports that are not yet verified include that neither the man nor Kapur were wearing helmets--which were supposedly found to be in the storage part of the moped, unused.

The accident is being investigated.

This is a total and complete tragedy, as Kapur was so young, and so good at what she was doing. You can see that Tyler was overcome by the incident, because she praised Kapur as the professional reporter that she was, and I am sure she saw a lot of herself in the young, eager and talented journalist.

The station released a statement, saying, "We are heartbroken here at CBS2 as a member of our news family has passed away ... Nina Kapur joined the team in June 2019 and was known for her contagious smile and love for storytelling ... she died at Bellevue Hospital ... she will be missed."

Mopeds are a fun way to get around town, but they can be dangerous.

I have ridden a moped myself, many years ago, and they can go up to 30 MPH and they are almost like riding a motorized bicycle.

You have to have your eyes on the road at all times when you ride one of the these things, and yes, they are small and flexible enough to be able to weave in and out of traffic with ease.

I honestly did not know that they can be ridden in tandem, much like a motorcycle, where one person is the driver and the other is a passenger, with their arms around the driver's waist, but I guess the modern mopeds can be used this way; I can tell you that the mopeds I rode way back when--in the mid-1970s--were way to small for two people to ride at once.

Whatever the case, a really good young reporter at the station is gone in an accident that reverberated through the station, and on the news broadcast--yesterday.

Again, you can say that it was a folly of youth that took Kapur away from us, with no helmets being worn by either her or the driver.

Whatever the case, she is gone now, with her legacy being her fine reporting for the station during the past little more than a year.

What a shame, what a real shame.