It’s that time of year when many TV stations conduct toy drives to benefit children in need. And while all toy drives celebrate the joy of giving to those less fortunate, one TV stations’ toy drive has a sad beginning. Photojournalist Pete O’Neal has seen many crime scenes during at 30 years at WMAR, the […]
It’s that time of year when many TV stations conduct toy drives to benefit children in need. And while all toy drives celebrate the joy of giving to those less fortunate, one TV stations’ toy drive has a sad beginning.
Photojournalist Pete O’Neal has seen many crime scenes during at 30 years at WMAR, the Scripps-owned ABC affiliate in Baltimore. He was so much a fixture of the city’s crime coverage that he portrayed a TV cameraman on the NBC series based in Baltimore, Homicide: Life on the Street.
But one night in 1993, his job became personal when he discovered the body of his mother, Jeromia, murdered inside her home.
O’Neal estimates he’d covered more than 1,800 homicides by the time his mother was killed.
“I remember my mother was number 69 for the year in 1993. When that happened I was working and I couldn’t reach her. I went to the house and had an officer meet me there. When we got there we found her on the floor. All the homicides I had covered I had this competitive nature, I didn’t think about the pain people were going through, until this happened to my mom. The 10 years of homicides I covered flashed before my eyes at that moment.”
His mother’s murder grew cold while police officers worked the case. O’Neal said he turned his mother’s murder into a mission to help children in need. “I wanted to paint a different picture for city children, that there were different paths they could take. Show them there is another world out there for them.”
So each year, WMAR’s It’s Kindertime Toy Drive is dedicated to fallen police officers and firefighters.
The drive has helped distribute more than 800,000 toys during its history, and generated countless donations to area organizations.
Donations will be accepted at all locations until Friday Dec. 19. Then on Tuesday, Dec. 23, a caravan of emergency vehicles will leave WMAR with toys in tow and sirens blaring and lights flashing.
In 1995, Baltimore police arrested a man in the death of 78-year old Jeromia O’Neal.
At the time of the murder, producers of Homicide: Life on the Street wrote “Jeromia O’Neal” in red on a board that lists all the city’s unsolved slayings, a real victim among the fictitious. After the case was solved, the name was changed to black indicating “case closed.”
O’Neal has won several Emmy Awards in his years as a photographer and was honored this year with a Silver Circle award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Chesapeake Bay Chapter, for his significant contributions to the broadcast industry over the past 25 years.
To read more about how police solved the murder of Jeromia O’Neal, click here.
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