An Update On The Couple From The Picture Seen Around The World

Most of us have seen this picture by now.

It’s heartbreaking…. and it’s beautiful. A man obviously protecting this woman in the face of unfathomable horrors.

It’s become one of the more haunting images of this terrible tragedy.

According to this:

This image of a man lying on top of a woman as he shielded her from the barrage of bullets that were flying around them has become one of the most haunting from the Las Vegas shooting massacre.

 

The powerful image, taken by Getty photographer David Becker, was one of the first to emerge from the massacre. At the time, it wasn’t clear if the woman was dead or if she had been seriously injured.

 

‘I don’t know if she was injured but he was very clearly shielding her with his body and protecting her,’ Becker said.

 

The couple had ended up on the ground as panicked concert-goers tried to escape the deadly gunfire from above. The man was photographed lying on top of the woman as he touched her cheek.

But is she dead? Is she just injured? Is he? Did they make it out alive?

I wonder this every time I see this picture… and now we have an answer.

“Seconds after Becker took the photo, he said: ‘I saw them both get up and run away.’

The photographer recounts the traumatic event…

According to this:

Becker had just finished taking pictures at the Route 91 Harvest festival and was back in the media tent editing his photos when the first shots were fired.

‘I went outside to see what was happening and a security guy said it was just “fire crackers”, so I went back to work. The second time I heard the popping sounds somebody said to me “it was just speakers or sound equipment” and again, I went back into the media tent and continued to work. Then the noises went again and that was when the crowd started to flee,’ he said in a statement issued to various outlets.

 

People were cowering, they were very fearful for their lives. A woman tripped right in front of me, a man shielded a woman with his body before I saw them both get up and run away, a man in a wheelchair was helped to an exit.’

It wasn’t until he went back to the media tent and called a colleague that he realized police had called a ‘code red’ and shut down the area.

 

‘It was then I started looking at my photographs and what I was seeing was just unbelievable. It had been so dark outside I couldn’t see the details, I just saw a lot of people laying on the ground thinking they were playing possum, but now I could see people covered in blood and I thought, this is real,’ he said.

 

‘When I saw the image of the woman lying on the ground covered in blood, that was when the impact of what I was experiencing hit; when I realized people were dying.

Wow….just…wow.

I can’t imagine. I still can’t wrap my head around it.