Cops: NBC producer plunges to death

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
Newsday
Aug. 04, 2007

A former television producer -- the husband of NBC News correspondent Dawn Fratangelo -- was fatally injured outside his home early Monday, apparently after he fell from his building, police said.

Eric Wishnie, 44, was at first described as the victim of a hit-and-run driver who mowed down the award-winning producer at Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street just before 3 a.m. He died two hours later at St. Vincent's Medical Center.

Later, police said Wishnie was seen falling from his apartment, above a dry cleaners on Sixth Avenue. Police said an autopsy will be conducted Tuesday and that they haven't ruled out the possibility Wishnie fell by accident.

Friends described Wishnie as depressed since leaving NBC News last September -- the circumstances were not clear -- after 19 years there. They said he also had recently separated from his wife.

"He seemed tired -- very down," said Pepi Andres, manager at the nearby Jefferson Market. "He seemed like he was out of it, I'm telling you. You can tell in the eyes."

Wishnie was a senior producer for "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" and kept that role when Brokaw retired and was replaced by Brian Williams.

His achievements included working overseas with Williams on election coverage in Iraq and on tsunami coverage in Indonesia. Wishnie also produced Brokaw trips to Iraq, Israel and Russia, as well as Brokaw's coverage of the Olympic Games in Athens, Salt Lake City, Sydney and Atlanta.

In 1993, while based in Chicago, Wishnie and Fratangelo won Emmy awards for their coverage of Midwest floods. They married in October 1997.

"Eric Wishnie was an enormously talented former senior producer at NBC News who had a hand in some of the most monumental and memorable news stories of our time," NBC News president Steve Capus said in a statement. "The entire NBC News family is devastated by this loss and extends our deepest sympathies to his family."

Matthew Nestel and The Associated Press contributed to this story.