{"id":17817,"date":"2026-07-16T03:19:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T03:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17817"},"modified":"2026-07-16T03:19:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T03:19:21","slug":"la-reporter-goes-viral-after-cockroach-crawls-on-her-during-live-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17817","title":{"rendered":"LA reporter goes viral after cockroach crawls on her during live shot"},"content":{"rendered":"


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NEW<\/span>You can now listen to Fox News articles!\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Los Angeles KTLA 5 news reporter Rachel Menitoff\u00a0went viral Wednesday after a late-night report featuring an unwanted pest.<\/p>\n

During Menitoff’s live report in Sherman Oaks on an ongoing heat wave Tuesday night, a cockroach appeared to land on Menitoff’s stomach before crawling across her neck and chest.<\/p>\n

“And it\u2019s a lot more comfortable at this hour, but we\u2019re still in the 80s here in the Valley,” Menitoff said. “So, overnight temperatures aren\u2019t necessarily dropping, and this leads to less recovery time from the daytime heat.”<\/p>\n

Despite the insect’s arrival, Menitoff continued her report unfazed as the bug jumped onto her microphone and proceeded to fly away.<\/p>\n

FLORIDA TV BOSS RIPS ‘CRINGEWORTHY’ POSTS AS ANCHOR’S BIKINI-CLAD SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS SPARK BUZZ<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Los Angeles reporter Rachel Menitoff kept her composure while a bug crawled over her neck and chest.<\/span> (Screenshot\/KTLA 5\u00a0)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Menitoff\u2019s colleagues covered the video the next morning, sharing video of the reporter after the live shot ended, where she began to brush the bug off of her.<\/p>\n

“Oh gosh. Oh, I feel something,” Menitoff said.<\/p>\n

The morning reporters praised Menitoff’s on-air composure, joking that they would not have remained as calm as she was in the same situation.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s our Rachel Menitoff, who is so professional,” anchor Megan Henderson said. “She kept her cool. There\u2019s no way I would have been able to keep going.”<\/p>\n

“I have to hand it to her. She was really calm,” reporter Eric Spillman said.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s terrifying,” meteorologist Kirk Hawkins said. “Now we\u2019re all going to have nightmares about flying cockroaches.”<\/p>\n

TERRIFYING CLIP OF LA METEOROLOGIST COLLAPSING ON LIVE TV GOES VIRAL<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rachel Menitoff recalled pushing herself to get through the moment a bug landed on her neck.<\/span> (iStock)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In a KTLA interview, Menitoff described that she was aware of the cockroach crawling over her but was concerned that she would not be unable to complete the report if she took action.<\/p>\n

“I said to myself, \u2018Just get through this moment and then kind of shake it off,\u2019” Menitoff said.<\/p>\n

“Ironically, the story was about the extreme heat in the Valley, and these cockroaches are attracted to the heat and the warm temperatures and our camera lights,” she added. “So, it was sort of the perfect environment for the roaches.”<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital reached out to Menitoff for comment but did not immediately receive a response.<\/p>\n

NEW ZEALAND REPORTER HAS BIRD FLY INTO HER FACE, LEAVING HER BLOODIED<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Some commentators attacked the state of Los Angeles’ streets from the clip.<\/span> (Fox 11 Los Angeles)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The clip was shared across social media by journalists and commentators who both praised Menitoff’s composure and criticized Los Angeles’ unclean conditions.<\/p>\n

“Had this happened to me, I would have freaked out,”\u00a0The Daily News Drop anchor Jeff Vaughn\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n

Conservative commentator Steve Guest wrote, “Karen Bass\u2019s LA is overrun by cockroaches. Gross.”<\/p>\n

“Why I prefer print. KTLA would’ve had a hefty fine for the number of curses that would’ve come out of my mouth if this happened to me. What a pro,” Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy commented.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt remarked, “Nithya Raman has made her district so filthy, you can’t even do a quick news hit without cockroaches crawling all over you like some Mumbai slum. The median home price here is $1.5M.”<\/p>\n

“@RachelMenitoff would\u2019ve crushed it on ‘Fear Factor,'” “Good Morning America” co-anchor Gio Benitez wrote.<\/p>\n

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Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Los Angeles KTLA 5 news reporter Rachel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}