Christine Haveford
Like most people in America and around the world my television has been glued to the news.
The horrific tragedy in Las Vegas where 59 people were callously murdered and more than 500 injured beggars belief.
Social media has been filled with images and videos that are so difficult to watch. These devastating videos show ordinary people trying to protect their loved ones from a maniac’s bullets.
One now iconic picture shows a man shielding his girlfriend from a barrage of bullets. It has become one of the most haunting photos from the Las Vegas shooting massacre.
It happened just moments after a gunman opened fire on 22,000 country music fans on Sunday night.
The shooter rained terror from across the street on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino.
The powerful image was taken by Getty photographer David Becker.
At the time, it wasn’t clear if the woman was dead or if she had been seriously injured.
But Becker has since revealed what happened to the mystery couple.
‘I don’t know if she was injured but he was very clearly shielding her with his body and protecting her,’ Becker said.
The terrified couple 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.
Seconds after Becker took the photo, he said: ‘I saw them both get up and run away.’
The photographer had just finished taking pictures at the Route 91 Harvest festival. He went 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.
Becker said he grabbed his camera and ran outside to take photos of the crowd fleeing. He claims that he was still unaware it was gunfire.
But he managed to capture images of people’s faces as they fled.
‘It was so dark I couldn’t really see what was happening, there were a lot of people crying, speaking on cell phones and ducking for cover.’
‘As the crowd thinned out I was able to go a little closer to try and see what was going on and take some more pictures, and I’m still thinking to myself “it’s just the speakers, there is nothing going on”.
‘There were groups of people helping each other everywhere and a real sense of people running for cover. People were fleeing, they were panicking.’
‘The gun fire was sporadic, it would stop and then more shots, then a lull and then more shots. I could hear people yelling at them to shut off the lights, to be quiet.’
‘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 Becker went back into 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.’
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