"Son, is Shelly in bed?"
It was a strange thing for my father to be asking me on the phone at four in the morning, but it was how the day of my very first news package started.
Seems a gunman had taken a hostage at the restaurant my wife worked at, and my scanner-hound father was calling to make sure it wasn't his daughter-in-law being held at gunpoint.
It wasn't. But the young lady being used as a human shield WAS a dear friend of ours, and as I shook all remnants of sleep away - I knew the next twelve hours wouldn't be my usual fare of shooting fat lady dress shop commercials.
My newly-wed wife and I jumped in our car and raced for the crime scene. When the police wouldn't let us past a barricade, we sped over to the TV station I worked at. In the newsroom, an editor played footage from hours earlier. Onscreen, a masked gunman could clearly be seen dragging our friend around by the throat outside the restaurant, as police pointed their own weapons and pled with him to go back inside (for years that image was the most unbelievable thing I'd ever seen on-screen -- until 9/11).
Leaving my upset wife in the newsroom, I ran to my office, got the keys to the production van and hauled-balls toward the restaurant. This time the cops waved me through, and within minutes I was a mere 100 yards from the crime-scene in progress. When the chief news photog from my station spotted me, he put me to work - despite the fact that I was just some unproven long-haired creative services punk-asss.
Before I really knew what was happening, I was manning a betacam (my first time even being allowed to touch one) a scant twenty yards from the restaurant entrance. Through my viewfinder I could easily see the outline of the gunman as he swigged beer, talked on the phone and waved his gun around. All around me SWAT team members sweated inside their kevlar and took aim at the wildy-gesturing silhouette. I was certain they would soon take the gunman out with a head shot (seen too many movies) and I rolled tape for what felt like FOREVER.
They didn't. To make a l-o-n-g story short, the gunman held an army of police and media at bay for more than ten hours. Every station in the market broke into programming, and for a good part of that day every viewer in the region leaned into their television sets in disbelief. For the first time I felt the surge of energy through my fingertips as I realized the frightening images I was framing up were beaming into living rooms LIVE, hypnotizing a very captive audience.
Finally, well into the afternoon - the gunman agreed to release his hostage if his uncle would be allowed to enter the restaurant. By luck, and by listening to my police scanner earpiece, I was the only photog (among many, many veterans on-scene) to get a shot of the hostage running out of the back door.
A half hour later, when the gunman finally walked out of the front door with his hands up, I was one of only two photogs to get the shot unobstructed. Most of the other shooters were hampered by tree branches blocking their view - but the news gods were smiling on me that day. I got rock-solid shots of the gunman's forced-exit and even thought to snap zoom in on his grimacing face as the SWAT members took him down.
I returned to the station that day something of an E.N.G. hero. I was glad my friend had made it out physically unharmed but other than that I was pretty numb. But I did know one thing: I'd shot my last fat lady's dress shop commercial. Within weeks, I was a news-shooter, and I foolishly assumed all future assignments would be just as action-packed.
I was wrong, of course. Fifteen years later, I can count on a couple of fingers the news stories that packed the emotional punch of that dramatic March morning. Maybe that's a good thing.
P.S.) There's ALOT more to the story. The hostage was the daughter of a local District Attorney (bad move for the bad guy). The hostage-taker turned out to be an employee of the restaurant and an acquaintance of all involved. Oh yeah, the gun he used...plastic. Months later I had the surreal experience of serving as consultant to the "Rescue 911" crew as they shot a cheesy re-enactment in the very restaurant the stand-off happened in.
All in all, it was the most tension-filled, sphincter-tightening, head-spinning time I've ever spent in the company of a news camera. The full story of that day is something I've fiddled with on page for years. If I ever finish it, it'll be the opening chapter of the book I'll probably never write. Thanks for bearing through this extremely-condensed (yet still too long) version.
