ABC News Anchor Says She Was ‘Jumped’ In DC

ABC News Live anchor Kyra Phillips revealed that she was recently “jumped” by a “half-dressed” homeless man in downtown Washington, D.C., while addressing President Donald Trump‘s decision invoke to the D.C. home Rule Act to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploy members of the National Guard to the city.

“I can tell you firsthand here in downtown DC where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past six months, you know, there were two people shot, one person died, literally two blocks down here from the bureau,” Phillips said while interviewing Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro during her live newscast on Monday (August 11).

“It was within the last two years that I actually was jumped walking just two blocks down from here,” she continued.

“And then, just this morning, one of my co-workers said her car was stolen, a block away from the bureau,” Phillips added.

“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 said.

The veteran anchor went on to describe the alleged mugger as “scary as hell” and claimed similar incidents had “happened to a lot of people in our building, sadly.”

“He was homeless and half-dressed — clearly wasn’t in his clear mind,” Phillips said of the alleged attacker.

“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,” she added.

Trump claimed that Washington, D.C., had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people” while announcing his “Liberation Day” decision on Monday. The president claimed that his administration was “not going to let it happen anymore” and vowed to remove homeless encampments from all public places, which includes parks and underpasses.

Recent DC Metropolitan Police Department data showed that Washington D.C. has experienced a 26% drop in violent crime compared to 2025, with overall crime down 7% in the last year, according to the New York Post. Trump, however, downplayed the numbers as “phony” and claimed Attorney General Pam Bondi was “looking into that.”