A longtime photojournalist in Texas got the picture of a lifetime, all while hiding for his life during a shootout.
Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Fox, who worked in the industry for almost 30 years, was at a federal building in Dallas to cover a routine trial when 22-year-old Brian Isaack Clyde, clad in a dark mask, began to open fire with a military-style rifle.
“I heard a bang-bang-bang car-backfiring noise and I thought, ‘Could it be? Is this a shooting’?” Fox told the Morning News.
Fox crouched down on the sidewalk near the courthouse entrance and began snapping photos of the developing scene while bullets buzzed around him, ricocheting off the wall near him.
“I just kept thinking, ‘He’s going to look at me around that corner and he’s going to shoot,’” Fox said.
But then Fox’s journalism instincts kicked in.
“So I pulled up my long lens and saw someone who I realized was the shooter. And I think, ‘Oh my God.’ I squeezed off a few frames as he picked something up — a clip, I think — and then I turned and ran,” he described.
When he turned to run, Fox worried that he could be shot in the back while he fled so he decided to hide behind part of the building and make himself appear “as small as possible” while he prayed that the gunman wouldn’t see him and kill him.
“I just stood there and prayed that he wouldn’t walk past me,” Fox said. “Because if he walks past me and sees me, he’s going to shoot me. He’s already got the gun out.”
The shooter began firing into the glass of the building, near where the security guards and metal detectors were located. Fox said that in the cacophony of gunfire he didn’t know exactly who was shooting, law enforcement or the masked man.
Police eventually caught up with Fox and he tried to follow them to safety. He then realized that the authorities had a man down on the ground, so he began snapping photos again while police pulled the mask off of the man.
“Your journalistic instincts just kick in,” he said. “You use the camera almost as a shield. I also felt a journalistic duty to do all that.”
Fox told a colleague at the office while he edited the photos just hours after the harrowing event, “if you stay in this business long enough, you’re bound to get shot at.”
