Ron Edmonds, Pulitzer-winning AP photographer of Reagan shooting, dies at 77

He died of pneumonia linked to a bacterial infection, said his wife, Grace Feliciano Edmonds.

Mr. Edmonds, responsible for covering the president, was the only press photographer capable of retracing the entire events of March 30, 1981, from the sounds of gunshots – which Mr. Edmonds first believed to be firecrackers. celebration – until the chaos moments that followed.

He trained his lens on the roof of the presidential limousine for a sequence of images showing Reagan grimacing and then being pushed inside the vehicle. Mr. Edmonds then turned back to the sidewalk, taking images of Hinkley under a pile of bodies and Secret Service agents on alert with their guns drawn. Also on the ground were the others wounded by Hinkley's .22-caliber revolver: press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and DC police canine officer Thomas Delahanty.

“It all happened in such a quick split second. If you looked to your right to see what the shot was, what the noise was, and looked back, the president was already gone,” Mr. Edmonds told the AP for a retrospective story. “The president immediately grimaced when the first pop sounded and that’s when I lowered the shutter.”

The cover won the Pulitzer for breaking news photography. “I wish it was an image that wasn't of violence, of people getting hurt,” he said after the prize was announced in April 1982.

He said he almost missed Reagan leaving the hotel. The presidential entourage left after Reagan finished his speech to members of the AFL-CIO union. The escalators leading to the lobby were crowded while a ballroom emptied. Mr. Edmonds remembers pushing and elbowing through the crowd to position himself near the limousine.

Some reporters were still inside the hotel when Reagan appeared. Mr. Edmonds expected a few seconds of routine — a smiling wink from Reagan to the spectators, then a return to the White House.

But he was always ready for an unexpected expression or gesture from Reagan that might cause a sensation. “He came. He saluted. I made a picture,” Mr. Edmonds recalled in a 2021 interview with PBS Hawaiʻi. “And then the bangs exploded.”

The presidential motorcade fled in a hurry, including the press van. If the van had remained, Mr Edmonds would have had to get in – and miss the events taking place outside the Hilton. “My job was to stay with the president,” he said. “Never leave the president.”

This time he was left behind. Meanwhile, in the presidential limousine, Secret Service agent Jerry Parr radioed that “Rawhide is OK,” the code name for Reagan's Secret Service, and that they were reverting to “crown,” code for the White House, according to transcripts released in 2011.

Reagan's condition, however, deteriorated rapidly. He had trouble breathing and frothy blood — a sign of a lung injury — covered his lips, Parr later said. They changed course to the nearest trauma center, George Washington University Hospital.

Reagan underwent chest surgery to stop internal bleeding and remove the bullet fragment lodged near his heart.

Meanwhile, Mr. Edmonds returned to the AP bureau at the White House, unaware of the seriousness of Reagan's condition. He thought his media coverage was a failure.

“I was sure I was going to be in big trouble,” he said, “because I knew I had never seen Hinkley’s face. I knew I had pictures of them wrestling with him, but first they pulled his jacket over his head.

Ronald Allen Edmonds was born June 16, 1946, in Richmond, California, and raised in Sacramento. His father was a truck driver and his mother was a housewife.

He took a photography class at a community college in 1968, and a professor encouraged Mr. Edmonds to photograph antiwar protests in Sacramento. He sold an image to United Press International for $25.

“I saw it in the paper the next day and knew what I wanted to do in life,” he wrote in a 2013 essay.

Mr. Edmonds freelanced in California before taking a job at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1971. At an Elvis Presley concert in Honolulu in 1973, manager “Colonel” Tom Parker banned media coverage. The newspaper successfully fought the no-media rule.

“The colorful, cigar-chomping Parker escorted me to my seat – accompanied by a 250-pound Samoan security guard to keep me there,” Mr. Edmonds wrote. “The lawyers said I have to let you take pictures,” the colonel growled, “but I don’t have to let you move around. »

Mr. Edmonds joined UPI in 1978 in Sacramento. In 1980, during Reagan's presidential campaign, the AP offered Mr. Edmonds a place in the news agency's Washington bureau. During a 29-year career with the AP, Mr. Edmonds covered four presidential administrations and events, including the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

In 2013, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the White House News Photographers Association.

Survivors include his wife of 45 years, the former Grace Feliciano; a daughter, Ashley Edmonds, a Washington lawyer; a brother; and a sister. He lived in Annandale, Virginia.

“There were a few days when I woke up and practically every newspaper in the world had my picture on the front page,” Mr. Edmonds once said. “It's really awesome.”