Hannah Alam didn't expect to be covering COVID-19.

She reports on national security and extremism for NPR.

But the funny thing about this moment, she says, is how the coronavirus, it ends up touching everything.

Like everyone, I mean, doesn't matter what your beat was before the pandemic.

Everyone's a coronavirus reporter now.

A few weeks back, Hannah started hearing about this story.

It was right at the intersection between a regular beat and the pandemic.

It revolved around a shootout in Missouri.

Much like the rest of the metro and the country,

this dead end street in Belton where a few businesses are located is pretty quiet. But it was

far from quiet Tuesday. That afternoon, witnesses told us law enforcement officers opened fire

on 36-year-old Timothy Wilson and killed him. We heard that there was this weird operation down in Missouri,

COVID connection, the guy ends up dead.

And encrypted messages, investigators say Wilson would use racial slurs

when referring to people of different races or religions

and that he held anti-government beliefs.

The man who got killed, Timothy Wilson.

He was 36 years old.

He had ties to neo-Nazi groups online.

The FBI had been keeping tabs on him since September.

But, you know, it wasn't until later that we started getting details

about what was going on with the investigation.

...