Car Chase Suicide Aired

Fox anchor Shepard Smith apologized to viewers earlier this afternoon for airing a car chase that ended with a man shooting himself in the head. In the scene, posted online, the man is seen stumbling outside the car, then raising what appears to be a gun to his head. He then pitches forward. Around 3:30 p.m. ET, at the end of the hour-long pursuit, he drove off the road, got out of his car and ran down a dirt path for a short period. He then appeared to shoot himself in the head and collapsed. Fox News quickly cut away from the shot and went to commercial after the gruesome incident. Host Shepard Smith immediately apologized for airing what looked like a suicide. "We really messed up," Smith told viewers after the flop. He said the footage was on a 5-second time delay and shouldn't have been aired. "We're all very sorry. That didn't belong on television.""Sometimes we see a lot of things that we don't let get to you because it's not time-appropriate. It's insensitive. It's just wrong. And that was wrong. And that won't happen again on my watch. And I'm sorry." In addition to Smith's apology, Fox News executive VP Michael Clemente issued his own statement: "We took every precaution to avoid any such live incident by putting the helicopter pictures on a five second delay," Clemente said. "Unfortunately, this mistake was the result of a severe human error and we apologize for what viewers ultimately saw on the screen."