The roaring Colorado River, deep canyons and snowcapped eastern mountains all paint the picturesque image of Grand Junction, Colorado, nicknamed River City, in mid-December.
However, this beautiful city recently bore witness to an attack on a cherished member of the Clemson family.
Ja’Ronn Alex, a Clemson alumnus and current TV reporter for KKCO 11 News in Grand Junction, Colorado, sat down with The Tiger last week to share his near-death experience on Dec. 18, 2024.
“Some of the stuff (other news outlets) reported on isn’t even true,” Alex told The Tiger in a phone interview.
Alex told The Tiger that during the day of the attack, he had been working on two new broadcast stories for KKCO 11 News.
“I was feeling good about myself. Those are probably the best stories I had done up to that point, just from the standpoint of the videography, raw storytelling, reporting itself, performance … everything like that. I did such a good job,” Alex said.
Alex told The Tiger that he had been driving a long way to return to the KKCO station, about 20 minutes longer than usual. As he was exiting Delta, Colorado, one of the cities on the way, a man in a “taxi cabster” caught Alex’s attention.
The man was identified as 39-year-old Patrick Thomas Egan, a Marine Corps veteran.
“He’s mirroring every single turn, every single lane change. He’s maintaining the same distance as me the whole way over here. And it just threw me off because that’s not normal. That’s very, very strange behavior for anybody to do,” the TV reporter told The Tiger.
At that moment, Alex noted that he wasn’t panicking; instead, he “took note of the very peculiar behavior.”
“As I’m entering the city of Grand Junction, he’s still behind me, and I’ll be honest, I probably cut off a few people, trying to shake him off my tail,” Alex continued. “While looking in my rearview mirror, I’m noticing people pissed off, flipping me off or whatever, like this guy still behind me at the same time, and then that’s when I got that sinking feeling in my heart that something is wrong.”
Alex then stopped at a stoplight, and Egan’s taxi cab pulled up next to him.
“I keep my head straight. I’m not looking at him. I don’t roll my window down. I’m just ignoring him. He rolls down his window. Starts yelling s— at me, very political, racist s—,” Alex told The Tiger. “I thought he was just trying to be like an a–hole or something … you know, because I was in a news car.”
Since Alex was returning from a day of reporting, he was driving a car wrapped with the KKCO station logo.
When the stoplight turned green and Alex drove away, he had a feeling that the situation would escalate after Egan shouted, “Oh, I’m gonna catch your ass,” Alex told The Tiger.
“So I was driving around like, ‘Oh, s—. This isn’t some guy being like, some crazy lunatic, like this guy’s actually trying to get me,’” Alex continued.
Alex then called his manager and explained the situation to them, but “they were not very helpful,” he noted.
“Go back to the station, just drive back and just walk in through the front door,” Alex’s manager said to him over the phone.
“And I guess my advice to you, if you ever decide to work in news media after college, make sure you get a good idea of who your managers are … because that was a decision that nearly cost me my life,” Alex told The Tiger.
Alex then pulled into the parking lot of the KKCO station, got out of the car, and started walking toward the station.
Egan, still in the taxi cab, pulled into the parking lot behind Alex.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you cannot be serious,”’ Alex told The Tiger. “This guy rolls down his window, and he’s like, continuing the racist s—.
“He’s like, ‘Oh, are you even a citizen? An American citizen? Let me see your ID.’” After “not even 30 seconds, (Egan) decides he’s had enough,” Alex continued.
As Alex was walking to the front door, his manager was standing at the entrance, holding the door open. Egan got out of the car and began “charging” Alex, to which Alex yelled at him to “stay away.”
“I didn’t realize it until I turned around for like, a split second. I’m still walking. I’m trying to keep calm. This guy tackles me to the ground, puts me in a headlock and starts suffocating me. All I can see is the blue of the sky.
“At that point, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my God, is this it? This is over. I’m going to die.’”
Alex said that he didn’t know how long Egan held him in a suffocating headlock, but that he was “so lucky” that three of his coworkers came out of the station and wrestled Egan off him.
“And so ever since then, it’s just been a whole range of emotions, mental anguish, a whole lot of soul searching, in a sense.”
When asked about how KKCO has been helping Alex through the aftermath of the attack, Alex told The Tiger that he couldn’t “100% say” that KKCO has been helpful.
Alex is currently on a short-term medical disability leave of absence.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just so confusing, but even then, one hell of a process, a very difficult and challenging one, more than I think necessary,” Alex said.
When asked what Alex has taken away from the experience, he replied that although he didn’t specify the exact words that Egan said to him, the attack has caused him to replay the experience in his mind constantly, as well as induce nightmares every night.
“This idea that I’m just going to die for the color of my skin.”
Alex is of Pacific Islander descent, which he believes is the reason for Egan’s verbal berating and physical attack against him.
“It’s nonsense for me to think about. Like that really was the case. This was a racial incident. I had never met this guy before. I don’t know who this guy is, but that was more than enough for him to justify him just stopping me from breathing,” Alex told The Tiger.
Alex is originally from Detroit but attended high school in South Carolina and graduated from Clemson University in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
Alex said that the “appeal to adventure” of a life in the TV news industry contributed to his move to the Centennial State.
“This side of Colorado … the western side … the west is so gorgeous, just beautiful. Every morning I wake up and to see the … mountains to the east, or to go down by the canyons, to see the Colorado River,” he told The Tiger.
“And the people here are nice, nicer than that guy, for sure,” Alex continued.
On Jan. 16, Egan was charged with second-degree assault by strangulation, harassment by ethnic intimidation and bias-motivated crimes, according to The Daily Sentinel. The charges are not finalized, but Egan will appear in court again on Feb. 11.
About 15 people in the Grand Junction, Colorado, community gathered outside of the Mesa County Justice Center to show support for Alex, holding signs with messages like, “Hate has no home here,” “Say no to xenophobia,” “Erase racism” and more.
“I would hope that our community leaders and political representatives and political leaders in our community would be calling these things out,” a supporter said during the gathering, according to KKCO News. “It should not be, although it typically is churches, of which I am a member, that are calling this stuff out.”
Egan’s defense in the case, as presented to the court on Jan. 2 by his lawyer, Ruth Swift, is his history of mental illness.
Several of Egan’s friends attended his recent court hearing and “asserted he would not reoffend,” while recognizing the narrative of Egan’s mental health difficulties.
However, District Court Judge JenniLynn Lawrence refuted this, saying that Egan should have known better given the fact that he is a United States Marine Corps veteran.
“I think when you are of your right mind, you would well recognize that these are not the types of behaviors that anyone in the Marine Corps would expect from you or would tolerate from you,” Lawrence said, according to AsAm News.
