Zoey Tur (L) and OJ Simpson (R). Simpson just lately died from most cancers (Getty)
Do you bear in mind the place you had been throughout OJ Simpson’s automobile chase by way of Los Angeles? Properly, transgender broadcaster and pilot Zoey Tur can: she was in a helicopter flying overhead and filming all of it.
Simpson handed away this week, on 10 April. His household introduced that he had been battling prostate most cancers.
30 years earlier than his demise, on June 17, 1994, Los Angeles County District Legal professional Gil Garcetti held a information convention to say that that former NFL participant OJ Simpson had not surrendered to police to be charged with two counts of homicide for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and her good friend Ronald Goldman.
OJ Simpson was regarded as on the run.
Tur advised Fox Information: “He was a fugitive. I turned to my crew and I stated, let’s get within the helicopter. Let’s discover him.”
Tur flew within the helicopter for over 5 hours and finally discovered Simpson driving in a white Bronco and being chased by the authorities.
“I appeared down beneath us, and there on the freeway, there was a white Bronco. And inside a matter of seconds, there was a police unit, a sheriff’s unit, one other sheriff’s unit, freeway patrol, and the white Bronco wasn’t stopping. We had been on the air stay forward of anybody else for about 22 minutes,” she stated.
After a number of hours, Simpson finally drove to his house in Brentwood, the place police negotiated to get him out of the automobile: “It was one of many strangest issues I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Tur was the primary to televise a high-speed police chase, and the information company she created with then-wife Marika Gerrard, Los Angeles Information Service, was the primary to make use of a helicopter to cowl breaking information.
Tur has additionally been credited with reporting on the assault on a building truck driver Reginald Denny throughout the 1992 Los Angeles riots in addition to discovering the crash website of Pacific Southwest Airways Flight 1771 after it was hijacked by a passenger.
Zoey Tur was married to Marika Gerrard, with whom she created the Los Angeles Information Service, for 23 years.
Their marriage got here to an finish in 2003 however resulted in two kids: Katy, a tv information reporter and anchor, and James, a physician.
Zoey Tur got here out publicly as transgender in 2013 and underwent hormone alternative remedy and gender reassignment surgical procedure in 2014.
Tur beforehand advised People who whereas her son was extraordinarily supportive, her daughter was “shocked”.
“She had a substantial amount of problem and we stopped speaking for a very long time,” Tur stated.
Katy opened up about her response to Zoey’s gender transition on CBS Sunday Morning, saying: “My dad stated, ‘I’m a lady.’ and I stated, ‘What? And my dad stated, ‘I’m a lady. I’m transitioning, I’m going to turn into a lady.’ And I bear in mind being at first puzzled and saying, ‘You gotta be joking. You’re kidding.”
“It was actually simply, it was quite a bit,” Katy added.
Tur has stated that her daughter was estranged from her due to her transition, however Katy claims they “weren’t on talking phrases for a short time” however that it was not due to the transition.
Tur additionally dramatically accused her daughter of transphobia on Fb, writing: “Reality is my daughter doesn’t assist the LGBTQ+ group. She’s Transphobic and fearful that it’s going to harm her profession as a broadcaster in these alt-right occasions. Profession earlier than household. Within the phrases of Paddy Chayefsky: She’s pure tv.”
What’s Zoey Tur doing now?
In 2016, Tur appeared in a number of episodes of the miniseries OJ: Made In America and has this week been known as upon to debate Simpson and her filming of his automobile case by way of Los Angeles, after Simpson’s household introduced that he had handed away.
Tur based a brand new media manufacturing firm known as NewsMediaFilms (NMF) in 2018 alongside along with her good friend Beth Youngblood, with NMF describing it as being “fuelled by their ardour for filmmaking”.
Zoey Tur has continued to cowl massive information tales, together with the August Complicated fires that unfold by way of California in 2020, and is the information director of NMF.
NMF’s web site states that the corporate is “dedicated to discovering, showcasing, and selling tales price telling”.