A Cary woman was alarmed last Sunday to find herself at the scene of the shooting of a woman in an armed robbery. The witness was nearly as distressed two days later to read her name in The News & Observer -- with the suspects still at large, deemed "armed and dangerous" by police.

"We were surprised when we read that the police department didn't divulge the name of the victim because the suspects were still at large, and then to see the lead paragraph of the story with my wife's name there as a witness," the woman's husband told me in a phone interview the other day. Why would The N&O put his wife at risk by identifying her as a witness when police considered the suspects armed and dangerous?

The simple answer is that Cary police released his wife's name but not the victim's. It was a public record, which the public and the media are entitled to see. (We won't identify the witness or the victim here, for obvious reasons.)

But the case does raise questions about whether a newspaper should withhold information when a person's personal safety might be at hazard. A tangential question: Does the paper need to inform a private citizen, when interviewing her, that her name will be in the story?

Here's the background: The woman saw a man in a bank parking lot, heard a shot, saw the victim lying on the ground screaming and saw the man running away. She called 911. In the crime report, Cary police deleted the name of the victim and others in her car but included the witness's name and phone number.

So, N&O reporter Thomasi McDonald called the witness and interviewed her about the shooting. The woman answered his questions and never said she didn't want her name used in a story, McDonald said. But when McDonald called back to check the spelling of her name, she declined to verify it, saying she wasn't sure he was a reporter. Because police had expressed concern about the victim's safety, McDonald had checked with them before calling the witness, and Capt. Dave Wulff said he didn't consider her to be in danger. (The victim survived the shooting, but the assailants still were at large as of Friday.)

You might wonder: Why should the newspaper quote a witness anyway if that might put her at risk and if an account of the crime is already available from police? Two reasons, says Metro Editor Van Denton.

First, a witness's first-person account enables the paper to give readers a fuller story than might be available from a typically just-the-facts-ma'am police report. Second, the witness's account provides a check behind the police report, which may not be complete, accurate or, in some cases, true. "It's something I always tell reporters: Go try to find witnesses to the crime, to give a fuller account to readers," Denton said.

This is not an isolated occurrence. Earlier this year, The N&O reported the name of an assault victim -- an N.C. State student -- whose assailant was released on bond shortly after he was arrested. The student's father called me outraged, saying his son had to move to another apartment for fear of reprisal.

In these kinds of cases, the paper is faced with weighing the personal safety of an individual against the public's interest in knowing the details of a crime. Publishing a crime story isn't just about selling papers; making the details known alerts readers about public safety and may help police bring bad guys to justice.

My own feeling is that in this balancing act, we should default to the security of a threatened individual. If a person doesn't want her name in the paper, we should respect that wish.

But it's not clear that the witness expressed that wish in this case. McDonald says she didn't. Her husband says that was implied in not giving the spelling. "Why wouldn't she if she has no problem with her name being used?" he said.

That leads to the second question. What obligation does the paper have to "civilians" -- people not used to dealing with the press -- in regards to putting their names in the paper? Reporters assume that if a person grants an interview, she or he is consenting to being identified in the paper. I think that's a fair assumption, but if there is any doubt, we should make it clear to the person that his or her name will be in the paper. Had The N&O done so in this case, there would have been no cause for bad feelings or, worse, safety worries, when the name appeared in print.

There's an interesting twist to this case: The N&O actually ended up misspelling the witness's name in the story, because the name had been spelled incorrectly in the police report. That presented the paper with a dilemma: Does it publish a correction to set the record straight, as is normal policy when inaccurate information has been published? Or does it forgo a correction, to spare the witness further grief? At the woman's request, The N&O did not run a correction. Good decision.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.