On Monday, Carter Evans was a relatively unknown local TV-news correspondent. On Tuesday, he was famous—his voice heard across the Internet and television news—after he got caught in the line of fire between police and ex-cop and suspected killer Christopher Dorner.

Evans had been covering the manhunt that led officers to a cabin in Big Bear Lake, California, for KCAL9, a CBS news affiliate in Los Angeles, when the shootout began. In the now viral video, gunshots and screams are audible in the background as Evans tells anchor Sandra Mitchell: “We are down on the ground behind the wheels of our car right now, and the door is open ... We are right, right in the center of the action here, we are right where this is happening.” He is then told by someone, presumably a police officer, to “get the f--- out of here now!” as gunfire pops loudly.

Evans made it out of the shootout unscathed and is still in Big Bear. CBS denied requests for an interview with the correspondent, who is continuing to report on his biggest story yet.

In the six months he’s worked as a freelance reporter for KCBS/KCAL, according to his LinkedIn profile, Evans has reported mostly on local crime. Before his current gig, he was a CNN Newsource reporter.

Perhaps better known, however, is his wife, Maxim model turned Fox News personality Courtney Friel. The couple has two children. In August 2010, Friel announced via Facebook that she and Evans were expecting their first child. “BREAKING NEWS!!!” she wrote at the time. “I am 4 ½ months PREGGO with a baby BOY.”

Though life-threatening, Evans’s coverage of the Dorner shootout was hardly his first harrowing experience. A video tour of Friel and Evans’s shared closet posted on Julia Allison’s blog shows that not only is he manly enough to build the shelves and hang the chandelier, he’s also comfortable enough with his sexuality to get dressed every morning in a life-size Barbie closet with pink walls and a leopard-print carpet. And for that we applaud him.