The reporter who was among those killed in Wednesday’s shootings near Orlando is being remembered as a “shining star” who did well in his classes at the South Florida high school he attended.
Dylan Lyons spent much of his life in Philadelphia and Central Florida, but the fallen journalist also has ties to Palm Beach County: He attended A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. According to his LinkedIn page, he started in 2012 and graduated in 2016. The Palm Beach County School District confirmed Thursday he was in the school’s theater program.
“The Dreyfoos family is saddened to learn of the tragic and senseless loss of our former student,” Principal Blake Bennett said in a statement. “According to teachers who worked with Dylan, he was a bright shining star and was adored on our campus. He will forever be in our thoughts and prayers.”
After graduation, he studied communications at the University of Central Florida.
Lyons, 24, died after he and another Spectrum News 13 employee, photojournalist Jesse Walden, were shot just after 4 p.m. while working on a report at the scene of a homicide that happened in Pine Hills hours earlier. Walden was critically injured in the shooting but survived.
After killing Lyons, the suspected shooter, 19-year-old Keith Melvin Moses, walked to a home nearby and shot two others, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said Wednesday. There, deputies say he killed 9-year-old T’yonna Major and critically injured her mother. Moses also is suspected in an earlier homicide of a 38-year-old victim who was found dead in her car about 11:17 a.m.
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Information for the Orlando Sentinel was used to supplement this report.
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