ABC News anchor reveals she was attacked in crime-ridden DC after Trump sent in national guard to clean capital up
Kyra Phillips recounted the 'scary as hell' incident, where she was 'jumped' near the ABC studios in DC by a 'half-dressed' homeless man who mugged her.
'It was within the last two years that I actually was jumped walking just two blocks down from here... And then, just this morning, one of my co-workers said her car was stolen, a block away from the bureau,' Phillips said on Monday.
Phillips said she fought back against the man, who she said 'clearly wasn't in his right mind.'
'It was scary as hell, I'm not going to lie, but I fought back. I didn't see any weapons in his hands. I felt like it was my only choice,' the journalist recalled.
Phillips added that while the official statistics say crime in DC is down this year, the city's downtown area remains dangerous.
'I can tell you firsthand here in downtown DC where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past six months, there were two people shot, one person died, literally two blocks down here from the bureau,' Phillips said.
'We can talk about the numbers going down, but crime is happening every single day because we're all experiencing it firsthand, working and living down here.'
Phillips' revelation came hours after Trump ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation's capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are in response to an urgent public safety crisis.
Trump said on Monday he was activating 800 members of the National Guard in the hope of reducing crime, even as city officials stressed crime is already falling in the nation's capital.
As Trump spoke, demonstrators gathered outside the White House to protest his move.
Local officials have rejected the Republican president's depiction of the district as crime-ridden and called his actions illegal.
'The administration's actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,' District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said. 'There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia.'
Schwalb, a Democrat, said violent crime in the district reached historic 30-year lows last year and is down an additional 26 percent this year.
Trump, in his address, said the statistics were 'phony' and noted that DC police commander Michael Pulliam was suspended last month after he was accused of falsifying crime data to make it appear like violent crime had fallen this year.
The city's statistics have come into question, however, after authorities opened an investigation into allegations that officials altered some of the data to make it look better. But Mayor Muriel Bowser stands by the data and said Trump's portrait of lawlessness is inaccurate.
Bowser said she would follow the law regarding the 'so-called emergency' even as she indicated that Trump's actions were a reason why the District of Columbia should be a state with legal protections from such actions.
'While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised,' Bowser said.
About 500 federal law enforcement officers are being tasked with deploying throughout the nation's capital as part of Trump's effort to combat crime, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
More than 100 FBI agents and about 40 agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are among federal personnel being assigned to patrols in Washington, the person briefed on the plans said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service are contributing officers.
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