Man who snapped tragic September 13, 1995
Web posted at: 10:50 p.m. EDT
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- On the morning of April 19, Lester LaRue, safety director for Oklahoma Natural Gas Co., raced to the scene of the bombed-out Murrah Federal Building. Amid the chaos, he grabbed the camera he kept in his car and snapped a photograph of 2-year-old Baylee Almon's lifeless body being carried away from the wreckage.
The photo was reprinted on the cover of Newsweek and other publications around the world, earning LaRue a measure of fame and $14,000. On Friday, it cost him his job.
In a dispute stretching over four months, the management of Oklahoma Natural Gas argued that the photo belonged to the company because LaRue, a 20-year-veteran of the company, took the picture on company time with a company camera.
LaRue insisted the picture was his, and he sold the rights to reprint and distribute it to a French photo agency on the condition that the agency would not profit from distributing the picture.
In the meantime, LaRue hired a lawyer and tried to reach an agreement with Oklahoma Natural Gas. The company said that by selling the photograph, LaRue had violated a conflict-of-interest agreement. The company said neither side would budge, and LaRue refused to give up the negative. Spokesman Don Sherry said the company felt it had no choice but to fire him.
"It was an issue of principle," Sherry said. "Where should the money go that was derived from the sale of the photograph? There was a strong conviction it ought not to go to any of us. It ought to go to the victims."
LaRue said he didn't believe the company should dictate how the money was spent. (114K .aiff sound or 114K .wav sound) While acknowledging that he's earned some money, he said he told the agency to give it free to any fireman who wanted a copy.
Last April, LaRue said he would not have taken the picture that broke so many hearts if he had known the baby had died.
"Sometimes I wish somebody else took that picture," he said.
Now the heartwrenching photo has brought more pain to the man who took it. "I don't know what all the years of loyalty were for," he said. "Dedication, nights, weekends away from my family. I guess there's not a lot of fairness in this old world."
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