UPDATE: KATV reporter found injured in home

— A popular television anchorwoman who had a small part in the President Bush biopic "W" was in critical condition Monday after being beaten in her home. Police questioned whether she could have been targeted for attack.

KATV anchor Anne Pressly, 26, was found Monday at 4:30 a.m. - a half-hour before she was due to appear on the station's "Daybreak" program. Pressly's mother went to the anchorwoman's house when she didn't answer a wake-up call, Little Rock police spokeswoman Cassandra Davis said.

Anne Pressly
Anne Pressly

Pressly was in her bed and was unresponsive and a police report noted that she was bleeding from the head. Davis described the injuries as "severe wounds" and that Pressly was stabbed. KATV - citing investigators - later reported that all injuries were from blunt force trauma to the head and upper body.

The anchorwoman's purse was missing and police said Pressly may have been beaten during a robbery. Asked whether Pressly may have been targeted because of her job, Davis said officers were talking to her co-workers to determine whether she "has had any problems." Davis would not discuss specifics of what the investigation revealed.

In a statement, KATV president and general manager Dale Nicholson said the anchor "is a person who simply lights up the room, by just walking in."

"The KATV family is having to deal with a personal crisis in our lives with the senseless brutality last night to one of our Daybreak anchors, Anne Pressly," Nicholson said. "I know her viewers will join her family as well as the KATV family in praying for a speedy recovery for Anne, who means so much to all of our staff."

The last known contact with Pressly was between 9:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Sunday. Davis said Pressly's mother regularly gives her daughter a wake-up call and went to the home in Little Rock's Pulaski Heights neighborhood when Pressly didn't answer.

Early Monday afternoon, a man answering a phone number for Pressly's mother, Patricia Cannady, said the family had no comment.

Pressly had a small role in the new Oliver Stone movie W, which was filmed in Shreveport, La. She appears briefly as a conservative commentator who speaks favorably of President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" event on an aircraft carrier shortly after the start of the Iraq war. She got the role when she went to Shreveport for a story on the movie and the city's film industry and was noticed by a casting director.

Spokeswoman Kate Hubin for the film company Lionsgate didn't want to comment but did confirm that Pressly was in the film.

KATV's Web site notes that Pressly's most notable interview was with Vice President Dick Cheney. Pressly was returning from a story in east Arkansas in Humphrey and traveling through Stuttgart, where the highway was blocked in front of hunting supply store Mack's Prairie Wings.

It turned out that Cheney, an avid hunter who sometimes pursues his hobby in Arkansas, was inside. Pressly asked for an interview, which she conducted on the ammunition aisle.

Pressly is a native of Greenville, S.C., and moved with her family to Little Rock while she was in high school. She is a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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