Newspapers also need to be careful to not spout facts about a potential crime that doesn’t have a guilty verdict. They’d have to throw an allegedly or something

Newspapers also need to be careful to not spout facts about a potential crime that doesn’t have a guilty verdict. They’d have to throw an allegedly or something in there to write it as you described which I don’t know would read as well. The way they wrote it let them put the facts first (woman hit by pepper ball shot by police) and then hedge the intent with an “appeared to.”