The shootings Wednesday in an Orlando neighborhood that claimed the lives of a 20-year-old woman, a young child and a TV news reporter has become the latest incident of a journalist who lost their life while on duty.
Spectrum News 13 identified the reporter who lost his life as Dylan Lyons. Another crew member injured is identified as photojournalist Jesse Walden and he was listed as critically injured, according to a story on the TV station’s website.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina said during a news conference Wednesday that they’ve detained Keith Melvin Moses, 19, who they believe is responsible for both shootings in the Orlando-area neighborhood. The child’s mother was also injured in the shooting.
“I want to acknowledge what a horrible day this has been for our community and our media partners,” Mina told a room full of reporters. “I work closely with all of you and know many of you and know the very difficult job that you do and also the very important job that you do for our community and for law enforcement. No one in our community — not a mother, not a 9-year-old and certainly not news professionals — should become the victim of gun violence in our community.”
Lyons, a Philadelphia native who graduated from the University of Central Florida and later worked in Gainesville before moving to Orlando, is believed to be the first television reporter killed in the state of Florida while working.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports 17 journalists, including Lyons, have been killed in the United States since 1992. Lyons is the first TV journalist to be killed since 2015, when reporter Allison Parker and photographer Adam Ward of WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia were killed in a shooting.
Lyons is the first Florida journalist to be killed since Dona St. Plite, a radio personality in Miami and supporter of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was shot to death outside Miami Edison High School on October 24, 1993.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)