Ron Edmonds, the Associated Press photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of dramatic photos capturing the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan and the capture of the gunman outside a Washington hotel, died Friday in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 77.
His wife, Grace Feliciano Edmonds, said her husband died in hospital from pneumonia caused by a bacterial infection.
On March 30, 1981, just his second day on the White House staff, Edmonds was assigned to cover President Reagan's speech to an AFL-CIO group at the Washington Hilton. After rushing out of the hotel ahead of the president, Edmonds took a position opposite the president's limousine, expecting that Reagan would do little more than wave to onlookers before returning to the White House.
“I had him in the viewfinder,” Edmonds told Gannett News Service in a 1982 interview. “As I pressed the shutter, he waved once to the right and then turned left, and then a shot went off,” he added. “I saw him flinch.”
Although there were other photographers at the scene, Edmonds was the only one to capture gunman John W. Hinckley Jr.'s attack on President Reagan in a series of photographs that began before the shot was fired and continued after a single bullet from Hinckley's .22-caliber revolver struck Reagan under his left armpit, hitting his seventh rib and penetrating his left lung.
Another photograph shows Secret Service agents Ray Shaddick and Jerry Parr frantically shoving President Reagan into a limousine, which drives off toward George Washington University Hospital.
The assassination attempt began at about 2.30pm when Hinckley, a 25-year-old with blond hair and a raincoat, fired six shots at a group of television cameramen and reporters standing outside the hotel's exit.
He also shot White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who was lying face down and bleeding from his head; Secret Service officer Timothy J. McCarthy, who was shot in the abdomen while trying to shield the president; and Metropolitan Police Officer Thomas K. Delahunty, who was shot in the neck.
One of Edmonds' photos paints a vivid picture of the chaos at the scene, with three injured men lying on the sidewalk, agents with their guns drawn, and two television cameramen filming Hinckley's arrest.
Returning to the Associated Press bureau in Washington, Edmonds worried he'd forgotten to take a photo of Hinckley's face.
“I know there are pictures of them wrestling him, and they started by putting his jacket over his head, which is a way of disabling someone,” he said in a 2012 interview with PBS Hawaii.
But his boss assured him he got the job done and rewarded him with a $50 a week raise.
“Sometimes you make your own luck. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when this happened and I was ready,” he told Time magazine in 2011.
“I wish it wasn't a photo of violence or people being hurt,” Edmonds told The Associated Press when he won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography in 1982.
Ronald Allen Edmonds was born in Richmond, California on June 16, 1946, and grew up in Sacramento. His father, Ernest, was a truck driver whose wanderlust meant the family moved frequently and Ron rarely attended any one school for more than a year. His mother, Dorothy (Tice) Edmonds, provided the family finances.
After graduating from high school, Edmonds worked for Pacific Telephone and attended Sacramento City College from 1965 to 1969. While there, he took a photography class taught by a newspaper photographer who encouraged him to take pictures of anti-war demonstrations in Sacramento, for which United Press International paid him $25 per photo.
“I saw that story in the newspaper the next day and I knew what I wanted to do for a living,” Edmonds said in 2013 when he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the White House Press Photographers Association.
After several years of freelancing in California, he moved to Hawaii in 1971 to work for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Four years later, he met his future wife, Feliciano, who was a reporter covering Hawaii's state and federal courts for the paper. Edmonds joined UPI in Sacramento in 1978 and stayed there for two years before being hired by the Associated Press in Washington.
Doug Mills, a former New York Times photographer in Washington who worked with Edmonds for 15 years at The Associated Press, praised Edmonds in an email for being “someone with an incredible work ethic who loved covering Washington's biggest stories” and “the first AP photographer to shoot digital images in the era of film cameras.”
At George Bush's inauguration in 1989, Edmonds sent digital images over telephone lines to newspapers around the world 40 seconds after Bush was sworn in.
Edmonds' extensive portfolio included photos of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat shaking hands and President Bill Clinton embracing them after the signing of the 1993 peace agreement; a shirtless President Reagan climbing a tree and cutting branches on his California ranch; and the eruptions of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano and Washington state's Mount St. Helens.
Edmonds is survived by his wife, with whom he lived in Annandale, Virginia, as well as his daughter Ashley Edmonds, his sister Lavonne Edmonds Cohen and his brother Donald.
While working in Hawaii in 1973, Edmonds was assigned to photograph an Elvis Presley concert broadcast around the world by satellite from Honolulu, but Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, tried to ban all coverage.
After the Star-Bulletin threatened to seek an injunction to stop the program, Colonel Parker softened his stance but still moved to restrict Edmonds' access.
After Mr. Edmonds and a burly guard had escorted him to his seat, Colonel Parker gave him his instructions.
“The lawyer said I had to be allowed to take pictures,” Edmonds recalled him saying, “but I didn't have to be allowed to move around.”