Gricean violation at the Sun

One of my coworkers drew this to my attention. The Baltimore Sun has a story today about a sad incident in which a man named Nelson apparently threw his three-year-old son off a bridge and then went home and "ingested" household cleaners (so that he's in an induced coma and can't tell anyone anything). After comments from the child's mother and grandmothers (the usual "I can't believe he'd do this"), we have this final sentence:

A person who did not identify himself at Nelson's Walbrook Avenue home last night declined to comment.

What? What are the reporters (there are two) trying to tell us with that comment? Why is it there? It doesn't seem to add any value whatsoever (reminiscent of the famous moment when Tom Servo said, "Audiences won't soon forget when the thing we didn't know what it was was put into the helicopter by the guy we didn't who he was"). But since it's there, we readers will try to make some sense out of it.

Please, o reporters! Do not violate the Gricean maxims like this. When you violate Quantity (as informative as is required) and Relevance like this, you make us search for implications. You should be reporting not making implicatures.

kthxbai