A former San Diego photographer was capturing images at former President Donald Trump's rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday when shots rang out.
Ralph LoVuolo says he's still dealing with the trauma of surviving a shooting. But in the middle of the chaos, the former Scripps Ranch-based journalist was able to capture gripping images of U.S. Secret Service agents swarming the Trump rally stage while shots rang out.
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“By the third or fourth pop, I was like, 'Oh, that's gunshots.' And I just hit the ground and looked for a safe place," LoVuolo told NBC 7 via Zoom.
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He says his journalistic instincts kicked in, even while he and the crowd were under fire.
"I just got up, and I started taking pictures of what was happening around me,” LuVuolo said. "I had that responsibility to do that. Not just for the media outlet that I worked for, but I believed for myself and others as well because this is something that my grandchildren are going to look back on in history, and I'll be able to tell them the story that I was there."
One of the pictures he took of a wounded and bloodied Trump surrounded by the Secret Service is now etched in history as the front page cover of the Butler Eagle newspaper.
Though the Pennsylvania paper hired LoVuolo to take crowd pictures of rallygoers, typically, he says they hire him to do part-time sports photography.
"In football games, football players running right at you. But you're like, 'I got to get that picture of them.' And you challenge yourself to catch that picture,” he explained. “But I've never been in a situation where there's been gunfire, and you're putting your life at danger. This is a whole new level for that."
When chants and cheers erupted after Trump's iconic fist pump, LoVuolo says cries for help sobered the mood.
“And then you start hearing yelling and screaming and calls for doctors and medics," he said.
Cory Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief, was killed by the gunman's bullet, according to federal investigators. Two other people were injured.
One of the pictures LoVuolo snapped of people huddled in prayer captured the grief and humanity.
"Just praying for our country. Praying for those victims that were hit, just it was just a very solitude moment," LoVuolo said.
While LoVuolo says his thoughts and prayers are with the former president and victims of the shooting, he also says survivor's trauma is real.
“I’m at a better place today than I was two days ago. I did hear a backfire of a car yesterday, and it did set me off a little bit. It brought me back there at that moment,” the Pittsburgh-area photographer said. “It just has me thinking about, you know, other political events and attending them and what risk that you put yourself."
It's a risk that has LoVuolo thinking about resigning himself to the safety of the sports sidelines.
