Young reporter covers Iowa parade disaster with first-person story, lead photo on A1
While the rest of us were putting fireworks and parade photos on page one last night, folks in Iowa had shocking bad news to play up.
During a Heritage Day parade in tiny Bellevue — on the shore of the Mississippi River along the eastern border of the state — a team of horses got loose and plowed into the crowd. Twenty-three people were injured, including a number of children. One woman was killed.
Dubuque — maybe 20 miles to the northwest — is the closest town of size. Here is the front of today’s Dubuque Telegraph Herald, circulation 29,162:
Not only is that lead photo — of a crowd of folks tending an injured child — a wonderful example of on-the-spot photojournalism, it’s also notable for another reason: It was shot by the reporter on the scene, Karina Schroeder. Who is surely older than the way she looks in her official TH mug shot:
Click for a larger view:
Karina writes in a page-one, first-person piece today:
The first thing that came to mind was the kids sitting on those street curbs, holding out their hands for candy being thrown from vehicles, as the horses and the carriage barreled down on them. Oh my God!
The first injury I came upon was difficult enough. A young child, wrapped in a little pink blanket that was covered in blood. Everyone was running and screaming for help or huddling in large, protective groups around victims strewn along the street and sidewalks.
It was a form of chaos I have never encountered in my short reporting career. I didn’t quite know how to handle the situation, or know how to remain calm. Nobody could tell me how many were injured, so I ran up and down the street trying to count the numbers myself.
The tally: Twenty-five injuries. Nine are injured seriously or critically. Fifteen are children. The woman killed was one of three people in a wagon being pulled by the runaway horses and the wife of the wagon driver.
In addition to steering reporters and photographers, Karina also took her own pictures. She writes:
As much as I tried to get some of my own on-scene photos that would help me report on such a nightmarish event, it was an emotional time that sometimes provoked rage and violent reactions. People told me several times to put my camera away.
I was more fortunate than one of the two TH photographers, who was assaulted by parents and bystanders as he attempted to record the event.
If you read only one story today, folks, make it Karina’s first-person piece.
Find the Telegraph Herald’s main story — and a small photo gallery — here.
The Des Moines Register — the big 151,448-circulation daily over in the middle of the state — led today with a photo of the same clump of people, but shot by Telegraph Herald staffer Mike Burley:
Scary stuff. I’ll never watch a parade again without thinking of this.
The front-page images are from the Newseum.