Associated Press
The Associated Press reissued two photos from Monday’s Navy Yard shooting Thursday. The news co-op had pulled the photos Monday evening, saying it was “unable to confirm” that the images — which showed several people attempting to help a man lying on the ground — were directly related to the shootings.
“[W]e did not stop reporting,” AP’s director of photography Santiago Lyon said in a prepared statement.
AP reporter Matt Apuzzo, with assists from Ben Nuckols and Jessica Gresko, tells the story of how the man being helped, Vishnu Pandit, ended up on that corner in the southeastern quadrant of Washington, D.C., on Monday. Pandit’s coworker Bertillia Lavern and a security guard drove Pandit as far as the corner, where the guard asked police to bring an ambulance. James Birdsall, whose involvement in the photo was first reported by Poynter on Tuesday, tells the AP that he “knelt at Pandit’s head while Lavern pumped at his chest.”
Earlier this week, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services reported that emergency trauma nurse Laurie Flaherty and EMT Noah Smith assisted in Pandit’s treatment while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The U.S. Department of Transportation, where both Flaherty and Smith work, is located across the street from the corner where Pandit was treated. JEMS later pulled the story (here’s a screenshot of it) because, as it said on Facebook, “We’ve been able to confirm that the patient above is not being treated for a gunshot wound related to the Navy Yard shooting.”
Smith hasn’t replied to multiple requests for comment from Poynter. I’ve tried Flaherty, the director of the Department of Transportation’s Office of Emergency Medical Services, and JEMS as well. Smith is visible in one of the shots — he’s the man in the black shirt with thick-framed spectacles in AP’s photo, taken by Don Andres:
- One of the photos in question. (Click to view bigger)
For reference, here’s an image of a page Smith maintains for his post as an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Washington, D.C.:
But Smith’s presence in the photo is only a footnote at this point. AP’s photo, at one point the object of great speculation on the Internet, stands as a legitimate record of Monday’s horrible events, doing what only photos can do — by freezing time, it fixed many stories in one spot. Despite its almost accidental frame, which includes a car window frame and side mirror, it’s one of the iconic images of the chaos that unfolded at the Navy Yard.
