Former CNN Headline News anchor Lynne Russell and her husband, Chuck De Caro, were both shot three times in New Mexico at 11 pm Tuesday night. Fortunately, the couple survived when an armed attempted robbery took place in their motel room.

CNN reported that one of its former news anchor and her husband were in a road trip stopover when the shootout occurred. Before heading to California, the couple spent a night in New Mexico to meet up with friends. Russell went out to get something in the car when the intruder, armed with a handgun, had slipped into their motel room.

"The man pushed me inside, I was airborne, literally," Russell told Albuquerque’s KOAT Action 7 News. “And [I] landed on the bed, and that was about the time that Chuck came out of the shower. The man was just wild. He was pointing the gun, and the way that he was acting, it was as if he'd done it before."

Immediately, De Caro went out from the shower and tried to calm the gunman down. “We tried to calm the man, ask him not to point the gun because we really couldn’t think what we could give him,” Russell told the New York Post. “It felt to me he was used to doing this, that whatever happened wouldn’t bother him,” she said.

At first, Russell thought the incident would not cause further harm until the armed man started firing rounds. "[The intruder] came over, grabbed the briefcase, and I thought for a moment he was just going to leave because he had something," Russell, who was also shot three times, continued.

Fortunately, she and her husband legally carried two .35-caliber handguns, which were placed in their side table. She had secretly slipped one of the two protective weaponries in her purse and gave it to her husband. De Caro, a former special force officer, was shot once in the leg and twice in the abdomen. "It was a gun battle, and Chuck was bleeding heavily, but he didn't stop firing because the man was firing on him, and he was looking for me," she added.

After a few firing rounds, the gunman who was identified in the news release as the “offender in the altercation,” was found in the parking lot and died at a hospital, as reported by CNN affiliate KOAT. De Caro is now recovering from his injuries.

Russell told Huffington Post, “He's my hero. He saved my life.'' To that De Caro replied, “I was determined to save my dream girl's life — even if it cost my own.'' The shootout occurred four days into the couple’s cross-country road trip from Washington, DC to California.

De Caro had worked at CNN in the mid-1980s as a special assignments correspondent. Meanwhile, Russell was the first woman to solo anchor in CNN Headline News.

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