Omar Jimenez, the CNN reporter who was arrested and released Friday morning during the Minneapolis protests, grew up in Kennesaw and graduated from Kennesaw Mountain High School in 2011.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz publicly apologized to CNN during a live press conference for what happened and ensured Jimenez and his crew were released within an hour with no charges.
The cops arrested him and his crew, claiming that they were not moving when told to do so, according to CNN.
Jimenez was named a national correspondent for CNN last summer out of the Chicago bureau to cover breaking news in the Midwestern states.
He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts but raised in Kennesaw. According to his personal bio, Jimenez played varsity basketball at Kennesaw Mountain High School and worked at the school's television station. He averaged 16 points and six assists as a senior and was team captain and MVP.
Rev. Raphael Warnock on Twitter said Jimenez and his family have been members of his Ebenezer Baptist Church.
At Northwestern, he played basketball for two years as a walk on, acted in several plays and rapped under the pseudonym "OJ Tropicana," appearing in a rap competition on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" in 2013.
While in college, he interned at CNN and NBC News.
He also worked with the Chicago Innocence Project where he investigated potential wrongful convictions with fellow journalists and law students.
After graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern in 2015, he worked in Baltimore as a reporter at WBAL-TV for two years.
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From 2017 to 2019, he reported for CNN News Source, providing news to CNN’s 900 local affiliates. Among the stories he did: the aftermath of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, the Las Vegas mass shooting, and the 2017 hurricanes that battered Florida and Texas.
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