Dylan Lyons, a television journalist, a gunman shot him dead while reporting on a murder scene in Orlando, Florida. The 24-year-old was covering an earlier shooting. It killed a woman when the suspect returned to the spot and started firing again.
Apart from Lyons, the gunman also shot two others including a 9-year-old girl. Photojournalist Jesse Walden got wounds in the attack. The suspect, Keith Melvin Moses, 19, has been detained by the police.
Reporter Dylan Lyons Shot Dead While Covering Earlier Shooting in Orlando
As per the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Moses first killed a 38-year-old woman named Nathacha Augustin in Pine Hills, west of Orlando, on Wednesday morning. Around 4 pm, Lyons reached there with his reporting team to cover the murder.
Moses then returned to the scene and shot the journalist along with Walden. He then went to a nearby house and opened fire on another woman and her daughter. While police arrested the attacker, the motive behind the killings remains unclear.
Lyons was working for Spectrum News 13 as a multimedia journalist. He joined the organisation in July 2022. The reporter was a native of Philadelphia. But he lived in Florida during his college years. As per his bio, his interest in journalism ‘was fueled by his desire to tell stories that impact local communities.’
How the deadly rampage unfolded
The first shooting happened around 11 a.m. Wednesday. A woman in her 20s was killed inside a vehicle on Hialeah Street in Orange County. That woman was believed to be an acquaintance of the suspect, Mina said.
Later in the day, journalists pulled the car, and the gunman returned to the area and shot two Spectrum News 13 journalists who were covering the woman’s killing, Mina said.
The suspect then entered a home on a nearby street and shot a mother and her 9-year-old daughter, the sheriff said. Both were taken to a hospital, where the child died and the mother was in critical condition Wednesday evening, authorities said.
“We don’t know why he entered that home,” the sheriff said.
Every reporter’s worst nightmare’
Spectrum News 13, a CNN affiliate, posted a tribute on its website titled “Remembering Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons.”
“He took his job very seriously. He loved his career. Also, he loved what he did,” fellow reporter Josh Miller said in the tribute. “He loved the community, telling the stories of people, reporting on the news, and he was just passionate about what he did.”
Luana Munoz, a reporter for CNN affiliate WESH, described an emotional scene after her fellow journalist died. Her colleagues had left the crime scene on Hialeah Street moments before the shooting, according to the station.
“This is every reporter’s worst nightmare. We go home at night afraid that something like this will occur and that is what happened here,” Munoz said. “We have learned that a fellow reporter has died while covering a shooting.”
“There are members of his family here, along with his fiancée, who are incredibly distraught tonight,” Munoz said. “There are other media people who are together and standing in solidarity tonight as one of our own has passed.”
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