Scenes from a homicide
Reporter Brian Day shot some dramatic photos while covering a homicide in La Puente Sunday. He shared the photos with me and I'm posting one here. I've altered it slightly to conceal the body of the victim.
The victim, Gabriel Martinez, 19, was left uncovered at the scene for much of the investigation.
Brian's story from Tuesday's paper is here.
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CONTRIBUTORS
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| Frank Girardot, Metro Editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, brings you behind the yellow tape with takes on true crime, cold cases and more. This is also your forum to discuss crime, its impact on your neighborhood and how we cover it. Have any questions or tips? You can leave a comment here or e-mail Frank. |
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Brian Day is the crime reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper group. E-mail Brian. |
My regards to Gabriel Martinez and his family. Altered it slightly? It's an entirely different picture without the body. Imagine if photos from every battle since the Civil War were altered, we'd never know what really happened, their history would be in question. A journalistic photo should be shown exactly the way it was taken, unaltered. If you don't want to offend anyone don't show the picture. I understand about respect for the dead and their family but deciding what to modify and what is respectful is no light task. The "decider" of what crosses the line of poor taste in essence becomes an oppressor. How am I to know what pictues are real and what pictues aren't real in regards to this blog? At least we we're alerted to the modification.
"Altered it"?
Tsk, tsk.
I think pictures shouldnt be altered , maybe that way young kids see what's going on in there surroundings and hopefully they'll be more careful. Tell it show it the way it truely is.
This is reality .
Perhaps a better alteration would be to put an opaque oval around the body, showing it as a human, but not gruesomly so.
I didn't think twice about the photo being altered until reading the comments. I guess that's just always been a part of the socity that I've come to know-THE PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION TO KEEP FOLKS COMFORTABLE (?)
We'd like to forget that we will die...and do everything to avoid it as a part of life..Yet, this is something totally different. These are cold blooded murders, horrific and maybe the pictures should be shown. Everytime that I see the bodies of those killed in the nazi camps I'm reminded of how in-human human beings can be.. There's no glorification in the deeds of these folks.
Ask yourself how you would feel if a family member, son, daughter, mom or dad was murdered and a picture was posted of them just lying there, sometimes covered, sometimes not, for everyone see.