Ty Greenlees
NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY
Dayton Daily News

The next time your news gathering efforts are impeded by slow e-mail or perhaps a chair back that won't adjust properly, consider how Cox photographers are going into situations where there is live ammunition.

Here is how Ty Greenlees describes the morning on which he snapped Cox's best news photograph of last year:

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"While driving to an early assignment, I heard a few short radio transmissions on the scanner about a shooting. I immediately locked onto the police channel to get a location. The urgency in the dispatcher's voice made it clear that the situation was real.

"When I arrived at an apartment complex where the shooting occurred, it was raining. All I could see was an officer standing at the back of a cruiser and pointing his gun.

"I walked around the corner and could then see the suspect standing in the middle of the parking lot. Apparently all the officers were busy with him and didn't notice I was there. It was rainy and dark and it took a few seconds for me to realize the suspect had a gun to his chin. I immediately made a few frames, backpedaled, and decided to find a location with some cover.

"After retrieving a long lens and a rain coat, I found cover across the street. Leaning around the corner, I kept the camera trained on the suspect. But I kept thinking, 'I do not want to witness this guy blowing his head off.'

"I stayed there for about an hour-and-a-half making photos until the suspect saw me and asked the police to move me.

"I later learned that the police involved had just completed hostage-negotiation school the week before this happened. It must have been a good school."

The suspect was arrested and is confined to a mental institution.

Greenlees is a graduate of Wright State University and has been a staff photographer for the Dayton Daily News since 1984.

He is an avid aviation enthusiast and pilot. In 1997, he and reporter Tim Gaffney flew a small plane across the country to photograph and write the series, "The Spirit of Flight."

In 1998, Greenlees covered Ohioan John Glenn's historic return to space.