‘Today Show’: Matt Lauer describes scary moment, as man cuts self with knife

During the Thursday morning broadcast of “The Today Show,” some of the lighthearted conversation on the plaza was interrupted by what was a genuinely scary moment that took place just off camera. While a single second of footage of it was not captured by NBC cameras, a man cut his wrists with a knife while Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, and the rest of the crew was trying to do a segment for the show.

Following a quick commercial break, the entire crew moved inside, and Lauer told viewers about the incident:

“He was controlled by our security team out there. However, he did harm himself in some way, so he’s now being attended to by medical personnel.”

No one else was hurt as a result of the incident, and there was never any indication that the man was out to injure anyone other than himself. What remains especially sad about this is that this is the second straight incident of cutting that has dominated headlines, following the breaking-news story on Wednesday regarding Paris Jackson’s hospitalization.

By all intensive purposes, you have to give the folks at NBC a great deal of credit for both containing the situation, and handling the way in which they discussed it on air in a professional manner. This was easily something that could have led to there being a great deal of panic, but it never happened, and nor was it ever sensed in watching the video. The truth is that this can be an incredibly difficult thing to contain, given that there is no way to keep anyone from bringing knives to an outdoor location without some sort of security check.

If you want to read more of the ongoing battle between “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America,” be sure to visit the link here.

Photo: NBC

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