A veteran New York television news anchor is due in court on Tuesday on a felony assault charge after police said he tried to choke his wife, a fellow news reporter, over the weekend and then verbally threatened her after being handcuffed.
Police in suburban Darien, Connecticut, were called to the home of WCBS news anchor Rob Morrison and his wife, Ashley Morrison, a CBS News 'Money Watch' reporter, well before dawn on Sunday after her mother contacted police with reports of a domestic dispute.
Morrison "became increasingly belligerent toward his wife during the course of evening, culminating in him choking her by the neck with both hands," Darien Police Captain Frederick Komm said in a statement, adding that responding officers observed red marks on the woman's neck.
While under arrest, Morrison "made verbal threats to do his wife additional harm," according to Komm. Morrison was charged with felony strangulation, second-degree threatening and disorderly conduct, and was released after posting a $100,000 bond, police said.
In a mug shot released by Darien police, Morrison appears to have a bruised lip and dried blood stretching from the bridge of his nose to his nostrils.
A spokeswoman for WCBS declined to comment and referred calls to Morrison's attorney, who did not immediately return a call for comment.
Morrison, a former Marine, spent 10 years anchoring rival news station WNBC's weekday morning show, 'Today in New York,' before moving to WCBS in 2009.
That year, he wrote a series of columns for the Huffington Post website, called "Daddy Diaries: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Anchorman." The Morrisons have a son in elementary school, according to Rob Morrison's fathering columns and photos posted on Ashley Morrison's Facebook page.
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