Vegas shooting: Couple pictured in heartbreaking photo managed to escape, photographer reveals

'I could see people covered in blood and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is real'

The image of the couple lying on the ground (Getty)

The photographer behind a haunting image of a couple seen lying on the ground during the Las Vegas attack as others fled the scene in the background has revealed that he saw them get up and run away moments after he captured the picture.

The image showed the woman with her eyes closed with a pained expression on her face, while a man lay on top of her touching her cheek during the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in the city.

At the time, it was not known whether the woman was injured or had been killed during the shooting, but David Becker, the Getty Images photographer who took the picture, told Time he saw them get up and run off.

“I don’t know if she was injured, but he was very clearly shielding her with his body and protecting her,” he said.

Mr Becker had been capturing Jason Aldean’s performance when he heard popping sounds. A security guard told him the sounds were from firecrackers – he did not realise at first that it was the sound of shots.

Stephen Paddock shot and killed 58 people on Sunday night when he opened fire on the festival crowd, injuring more than 500 others. He committed the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Once Mr Becker saw a lot of people “panicking and running”, crying and calling people on their phones, he started to realise what was happening and began taking pictures.

The severity of the situation did not become clear until he started looking through his pictures in the media tent where he had been filing earlier images of the concert.

“I could see people covered in blood and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is real’,” he said. He was evacuated from the area shortly afterwards.