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NYT photojournalist appears to capture the moment a bullet whizzed past former President Donald Trump at Saturday rally in PA

Doug Mills, a New York Times photographer, appeared to capture an image of a bullet streaking past Donald Trump’s head, a former FBI agent said.
New York Times
Doug Mills, a New York Times photographer, appeared to capture an image of a bullet streaking past Donald Trump’s head, a former FBI agent said.

A photojournalist who was on the scene covering former President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday appeared to capture an image of the exact moment a bullet whizzed past the former president’s head.

The image was taken by New York Times photographer Doug Mills, one of four media photographers permitted in the buffer zone around the stage.

Mills told NPR’s All Things Considered that at first he didn’t realize the loud pops he heard were gunshots, but then he saw that Trump was bleeding.

“I kept taking pictures and then I realized that he had grimaced and then he grabbed his ear and then he took his hand off his ear and there was blood on his ear and then he went down,” he said. “And I was like, ‘oh my God, he’s been shot.’ ”

Mills continued to snap photos as Secret Service agents surrounded the former president, and as Trump defiantly pumped his fist in the air in the moments after the attempted assassination.

As Mills was preparing to send his photos back to the newspaper, he realized that he might have been taking pictures while the shooting occurred. He asked his photo editor to take a close look at the images filed.

“She said, ‘there’s actually a picture with the bullet going behind him,’ ” Mills recounted.

Joe Hernandez is a former WBGO Statehouse reporter who now works for NPR