NBC4 anchor Leon Harris struggled to get through a news segment before he was swiftly taken off the air, sparking fears for his health.
Harris’ broadcast went viral on Thursday night after he appeared to slur his words and miss the end of sentences just minutes into the show.
In the opening segment, he struggled to say several street names and began chuckling to himself after multiple slip-ups.
The newsreader’s condition appeared to deteriorate throughout the two-minute piece, stumbling over words as he continued to grapple with the teleprompter.
He was taken off the air soon after, as the network turned to a weatherman to step in.
It is unclear if Harris was suffering some form of medical emergency, and NBC4 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The anchor was taken off the air after reading the 6pm headlines for the Washington DC area, and viewers noted that it went over 20 minutes without broadcasting any news as the station played a long feature segment and aired extended weather reports.
Weatherman Ryan Miller acknowledged during his time on air that the station had received ‘a lot’ of messages from viewers concerned about Harris’ condition.
‘We want to assure you that our colleague Leon Harris is fine,’ he said.
Only weeks earlier Harris revealed he was recovering from foot surgery, and told viewers he was taking time off the air to recover after breaking his foot in five places slipping on his home stairs.
Viewers said NBC4 briefly returned to the news before NBC Nightly News aired half an hour earlier than scheduled.
One concerned viewer took to X to wish Harris well, saying his broadcast was ‘hard to watch.’
‘Leon Harris is one of the OGs in the DC local TV business,’ they said. ‘Hope he’s okay.’
Another said: ‘Praying he’s not having a stroke or anything of that nature. Prayers up for this man!’
Some viewers feared the episode was related to Harris’ public battles with addiction, as he has spoken candidly about his past issues with alcohol.
Harris, a former anchor for CNN, made headlines 10 years ago when he was arrested for a DUI in Montgomery County, Maryland, and was handed a six-month suspended jail sentence.
In January 2022, Harris was arrested and charged again for a DUI in Montgomery County following a crash with another vehicle.
The longtime Washington DC broadcaster was driving outside of the nation’s capital when he rear-ended a car, sending it into another vehicle, the Montgomery County police report said at the time.
No one was seriously injured, however when officers arrived at the scene, they found the anchor attempting to flee, police reported.
When stopped by police, Harris failed a field sobriety test and recorded a .08% BAC- twice the legal limit- during a breathalyzer test, police said.
He spent 10 days in jail and was taken off the air by NBC4 for a month while being investigated, and after receiving a one-year suspended jail sentence, he spoke candidly with viewers upon his return.
‘Many of you know that I made a terrible mistake one night in January,’ he said to open the broadcast.
‘After drinking, I decided to get into my car and drive. This is the worst decision I could possibly have made.’
Speaking with the network soon after, he admitted: ‘I thought after having about four glasses of wine I was good.. I wasn’t, nobody is going to be good after that.’
He said he was seeking daily therapy and ’embracing sobriety’, and was seeing some ‘very tough professionals to get control of this disease called alcoholism.’
Harris was also off the air weeks ago at the end of September as he revealed he underwent foot surgery, and joked with viewers that he wished he had a ‘really good story’ for why he was taken off the air again.
‘I wish it involved me saving a baby from a burning building or something like that. But, unfortunately, not the case,’ he said, revealing he broke his foot in five places.
‘Whatever you do, do not run up and down stairs in socks.’
Harris has twice been awarded the National Cable Ace Award for Best Anchor and won a dozen Local Emmys for his reporting and anchoring throughout the years.
In 2013, Harris shared that he experienced a life-threatening health crisis which put him in intensive care unit for two weeks and has left him with half a pancreas.
At 52 years old, he was airlifted from his home to a hospital in Baltimore, where he was diagnosed him with acute necrotizing pancreatitis.
His condition was life-threatening as his pancreas was inflamed and starting to die, which in turn had caused his kidneys to start to fail and his lungs were filling with fluid.
The head of trauma at the Baltimore hospital described Harris’ CT scan as ‘looking if a bomb had gone off… where the pancreas resides.’
While on a ventilator, his heart stopped on two different days and he was technically dead. But then the pancreatitis subsided just as quickly as it came on and after five weeks, Harris was back on the air.