Jesse Walden is a photographer in Florida, recently caught up in the same deadly ambush which killed fellow reporter Dylan Lyons and two others. They were covering a story about a local homicide and ended up as targets on Wednesday. He thought he was caught in a drive-by, then realized it was worse.
Reporter killed in ambush
Florida’s daylight ambush caught everyone by surprise on Wednesday, February 22. Especially photographer Jesse Walden and the reporter he was with, Dylan Lyons. Two others ended up dead, as well. Including a 9-year-old girl. When the lead started flying, Walden “thought he was caught in the middle of a drive-by shooting.”
Then, he learned he was the target. “I turn around because I’m like, ‘Oh, there must be a drive-by shooting going on.‘ I see he’s shooting at me,” Walden relates from his bed in the hospital.
At first, the video reporter “assumed he was shooting at a house or something behind me and I just happened to catch a bullet. But he kept shooting at me.” They had just rolled up “to the scene of a previous homicide in Orlando when he went to unload equipment from the unmarked car.”
My friend Jesse Walden survived the deadly shooting spree in Orlando, FL on Wednesday. The reporter he was working with did not. Dylan Lyons was about the same age I was when I started working with Jesse. We share his story next on @KOB4. pic.twitter.com/2xLVzL2Z3E
— Ryan Laughlin (@RyanLaughlinKOB) February 24, 2023
They were covering the incident for Spectrum 13. Walden had been driving. As he stepped out of the vehicle, “he started hearing gunshots being fired in his direction.”
Walden crouched “behind the wheel of his car as alleged gunman Keith Moses, 19, approached the vehicle and continued his rampage, shooting into the car.” Reporter Dylan Lyons, “a 24-year-old rising journalist,” was killed in the passenger seat.
“I was trying to figure out if I could kinda play cat and mouse with him and avoid being shot.” He was hit in the groin.
PICTURED: T'Yonna Major, the nine-year-old girl also shot dead in Pine Hills, FL.
Keith Melvin Moses is accused of murdering her after shooting dead reporter Dylan Lyons and a 38 year old woman earlier that day. pic.twitter.com/T1bFOeasx6
— Jen Smith (@Jen_e_Smith) February 23, 2023
They were best friends
Walden came aboard the station in April of last year and Lyons started only two months later and “the station immediately paired the two together.”
Dylan “was a reporter I worked with every day. We were best friends. He was just a sweet guy. He was young and he loved trying hard. That’s what we like to do. We like to push the boundaries. We like to get our hands dirty.” They’re supposed to bring you the headlines, not star in them.
The ambush, Walden proclaimed, was “just unprovoked, senseless, random violence that no one could’ve saw coming. It’s so unfair that it happened to Dylan.” Apparently, it was a busy day for Keith Moses.
This is the moment OCSO deputies apprehended Keith Moses, who shot five people on Feb. 22, killing three: 38-year-old Nathacha Augustin, 9-year-old T’yonna Major and @MyNews13 reporter Dylan Lyons. pic.twitter.com/KS7hx1Q2V2
— Orange County Sheriff's Office (@OrangeCoSheriff) February 23, 2023
His “alleged killing spree began around 11 a.m. when he fatally shot his acquaintance Nathacha Augustin, 38 in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood.” He wasn’t happy to see a reporter and his camera man when he returned to the scene of the crime.
When he opened fire on the reporter team, he also “killed 9-year-old T’Yonna Major, an aspiring gymnast. Major’s mother was also injured.” The body cam footage from police show as he was arrested Thursday evening. Moses “fought with officers and plead for his release as they retrieved a gun from his pants.”
Of course, he had to throw down the race card. “I can’t breathe!” Moses, 19, repeatedly screams. “I can’t breathe!” Neither can the reporter or the little girl he killed.
