PITTSBURGH — While NHL hockey won’t return for a few months, Penguins president/CEO David Morehouse made a pretty incredible save Saturday as protests outside of PPG Paints Arena turned violent.

After witnessing a group of protesters beating up KDKA-TV cameraman Ian Smith — throwing him to the ground, stomping him in the head and smashing his camera to pieces — Morehouse emerged from the Highmark Gate along Centre Ave., near the statue of team co-owner Mario Lemieux.

Mr. Morehouse located Smith and dragged him inside to safety before he was transported to Mercy Hospital, with Mr. Smith tweeting a picture of himself giving a bloody thumbs up from the back of the ambulance.

That tweet set off a chain reaction in the KDKA community, the nexus of those conversations becoming Larry Richert, a longtime anchor and reporter on the station and currently a morning show host on NewsRadio 1020 KDKA-AM.

“(Smith) posted that picture, and I called him,” Mr. Richert explained by phone late Saturday night. “He answered. He actually was on a stretcher at UPMC Mercy Hospital, waiting to get a CT scan. He said he was beat up and emotionally shaken by people saying they were going to kill him in the middle of a mob scene.

“I said, ‘Who saved you?’ He didn’t know. He said, ‘I wish I could find them. I want to thank them for saving my life because I felt my life was in danger. Like, real danger. I could have been killed.’”

Later, after some additional reporting, Mr. Richert figured out that it was indeed Mr. Morehouse.