This is my third day post for the News Photographers Association of Canada.
So, one of the things that I do during my usual week is to post to my own blog. This would be this week’s entry. (Yes, my NPAC blog for today is my other blog posting.) For photographers, one of the greatest compliments you can give is the phrase, “I wish I took that photo.” (Of course this might also be a tell about our egos.) And this is how many of my colleagues and I felt when we saw this photo by Shaughn Butts taken on the night of October 1, 2006. This is his account of a man known on Edmonton streets as Preacher.
EDMONTON, AB. OCTOBER 1, 2006 - Eugene Michael Falle known on the streets as Preacher, 32, sits on the third-floor ledge of the Wyser Manor apartment building on October 1, 2006 at 9518 102 A Ave. where a dead body hangs head-first from a nearby window. Victim was Shane Chalifoux, 18. Photograph by: Shaughn Butts/Edmonton Journal
The Call
I was at home and it was about ten o’clock. I live close to downtown and so I’m able to respond to things quickly. A cop reporter called me and said that there was a homicide at a rooming house downtown. I knew that because it was late, it would either have to be a great picture or it would be something we would pick up on Monday morning.
I didn’t hear back from the reporter again. But I wished I had. I wished I had some preparation for what I was about to see. Because I think I would of reacted differently to it.
When I got there I parked my car. It was probably the strangest scene I’d ever seen. I was familiar with the building. It was called Wyser Manor and I knew it because it was a shithole. It was a drug den. It was full of assholes and it had been recently renovated. I parked close by and walked to the main door, which faces south. There was a bunch of cops there. Immediately I was spotted by a staff sergeant which is something I always try to avoid. I always try to avoid bars because they will either run to you and say “no comment” or “PR is on their way” or they will point towards the furthest sidewalk that they can see. “The edge of the horizon, go over there.”
A Guest To the Show
Anyways, I was busted right away by him but he could not of cared less about me. So, I thought this is really weird. There was no tape around the scene so I didn’t know where the scene was. All of a sudden I saw the reporter. She was huddled in the bushes further west down the street. I thought, “this is weird man.” She was motioning to me and I was watching the cops. I still didn’t know what was going on and why she would be down there. So, I peaked around the corner because I heard someone talking. I saw a cop who was standing in a parking lot beside the building and talking to somebody. He was looking up. I didn’t want to disturb what was going on so I put my cameras down. I peaked around the corner from across the street. And I saw a man sitting there—on the ledge. I still hadn’t seen the body yet. But I saw this man and I thought, this is crazy. This is supposed to be a homicide and they’re trying to talk this guy down. I talked to the reporter. And she said, “you got to look further around the corner.” So I came around and there was this corpse hanging out the window. And beside that was this guy. Somehow if I could have been able to take that picture I think that would have been a killer photo. But I didn’t want to influence the scene (by attracting attention to myself). I felt like I was a guest in that whole scenario. And I knew that I couldn’t take pictures there.
So, I went back to my car and I drove to the other side with the Preacher and the body in the line of site. I drove down into that vacant parking lot and got out my 300(mm lens) and I shot from the parking lot. I actually shot it from my car.
I took about 15 images and then he got up and walked inside. It was over that quickly. In hindsight I wished I had been able to move around and get angles but really I got there at the tail end of that whole thing. So, when he went inside he was tasered. He was tasered at least twice. I could see the blue flashes in the room. I drove back down to the front of the building where I initially started and I got him coming out of the building in cuffs. He was covered in blood and tattoos. That was it. I was there less than 15 minutes, for sure.
EDMONTON, AB. OCTOBER 1, 2006 - Eugene Michael Falle known on the streets as Preacher, 32, is escorted out by police at Wyser Manor apartment building. Photograph by: Shaughn Butts/Edmonton Journal
Stop The Presses
I called the desk right away and I said that I think I got a pretty good picture. It was 10:30 by then and they said that if you can get the picture in within 15 minutes we will take a look at it, we’ll see. I sent it in and the guy on the desk called me back and he said, “That is the greatest picture. We’re ripping front page. That’s going front page.”
It was a big risk for me at that time to get in my car and drive down the alley but it was my only option. If I would of stood there and started clicking away I might of gotten a picture off but who knows what of happened. I would have enraged those cops and I could have influenced the outcome of whatever happened that night. I wouldn’t want to do that. Because the guy up there hadn’t noticed me yet. The cop talking to him hadn’t noticed me yet.
It came out later in court that the guy who was killed had originally broke into Preacher’s apartment. And Preacher defended himself, or so he claimed. He stabbed him something like 37 times (police say he was stabbed 75-100 times). He pulverized him. And then pushed him out the window.
What I remember most of that picture, oddly enough, is when I would ask people about that picture they would say that it’s a nice picture of a guy on a ledge. For most people I had to point out the dead guy.
The kid lived in Velika Kladusa, Bosnia actually. He was about 10, when he lost his arm just after the war in Bosnia ended, and he and his friend found a discarded rifle. They were taking turns posing with the gun for photographs as they had seen their fathers do. The friend was holding the gun when it discharged and hit his friend in the arm. When I took his photo, he was shirtless initially for some bizarre reason, so I asked him to put on his shirt and I remember seeing in my mind what was about to happen, and it did. Thankfully I hit the button at the right moment. I had to wait about three weeks to see the image. It was shot on Tmax CN.
Photograph by: Shaughn Butts/Edmonton Journal
Do you still think about the photo of Preacher at all? Does it disturb you?
No. Things don’t haunt me like that. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but they don’t. The only thing that does haunt me is the odor of death. The smell of mort (death). If I think hard enough I can still smell Kosovo. I can still smell the cordite or the gunpowder. I can still smell the blood. I can still smell it. It smells like autumn. But intensified. And that’s the only thing that’s fresh in my mind. And that was ten years ago. Shaughn has been with the Edmonton Journal for 15 years. He has worked at 8 papers before that and one daily, in Medicine Hat. He graduated from SAIT in 1991.
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