'He kept shooting at me,' photographer wounded in Florida shooting says
A Florida news photographer wounded in a shooting that killed his colleague said he thought he was struck by a stray bullet “but he kept shooting at me.”
Spectrum News 13 photographer Jesse Walden was wounded and reporter Dylan Lyons was killed Wednesday in shootings near Orlando that killed a 9-year-old and wounded her mother, officials have said.
“Dylan was a reporter I worked with every day. We were best friends,” Walden told NBC affiliate KOB of Albuquerque, New Mexico, from his Florida hospital bed Thursday. “He was just a sweet guy.” Walden worked for KOB earlier in his career.
The journalists were in Pine Hills to cover a deadly shooting when the gunman shot them, as well as the mother and the child, who were in a nearby home, authorities said.
Walden told KOB that he was getting his camera from the trunk of the car, which Lyons, 24, was in, when he heard shots and felt a pain in his groin.
“I see that he’s shooting at me. I was assuming he was shooting at a house or something behind me, and I just happened to catch a bullet,” Walden told the station. “But he kept shooting at me.”
Walden said that he ducked under the wheel of his car and that the gunman walked forward and fired into the vehicle. Lyons, who was in the passenger seat, was struck and killed.
Keith Melvin Moses has been arrested on a charge of first-degree murder in the earlier killing of Nathacha Augustin, 36, who was shot in the area at 11 a.m. Wednesday, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.
More charges will follow in the shootings of the journalists and the mother and her daughter, the sheriff’s office said. The child, T’yonna Major, later died.
Moses was arrested shortly after the afternoon shootings, officials have said. Body-worn camera video released Thursday showed his arrest by sheriff’s deputies.
Moses has not been speaking to investigators, and a motive is unclear, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said.
“It’s one of the questions that we would really like to answer for our community — why did he do this?” Mina said.
Moses is being held without bond, officials said. Court records show he is being represented by the public defender's office. The public defender's office for Orange and Osceola counties did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.