College Media Matters notes that while waiting for rapper Tyler the Creator to take the stage during a show at South by Southwest (SXSW), Jane Claire Hervey witnessed the immediate aftermath of a deadly crash.

In a compelling piece earlier this week for Orange, the online student magazine she helps run at the University of Texas at Austin, Hervey writes publicly for the first time about what she saw — and experienced — firsthand.

As she recalls, mass confusion and helplessness were two of the main feelings that initially tore apart her insides — while “the blood and the bodies” played out synchronously with heavy metal music and mosh pits:

“For about two minutes, I watched someone crouch over a body laid out on the street, performing CPR. I don’t know why I stared. Numb. Everyone around me whispered, and I’m not sure if I even spoke. ‘What should we do, what should we do, what should we do,’ buzzed around. People began to gather on our railing — what they say about train wrecks is true — and the story was retold and retold. Calls were made, texts were sent and the frantic social media posts began.”

The full-bore news reporting started in earnest soon after, presenting her with a media ethics memory she has found hard to shake. As the enormity of the crash became apparent that night and law enforcement and emergency services multiplied, Tyler the Creator’s performance was canceled. While leaving the area with the rest of the crowd, Hervey overheard an Austin American-Statesman photographer shouting at police, demanding to be granted access….

“As a journalist myself, I cannot get over the apparent lack of feeling he showed. I do not feel that objectivity entails a disregard for empathy and respect during times of terror and heartache. The photos those [American-Statesman] photographers took obviously helped others to understand what had happened that night, and possibly help those not at the scene identify whether their friends had been a part of the accident, but at what cost? At what point are we, as journalists, simply observers? At what point are we justified to yell in officers’ faces for the sake of a story — a story that has not ended yet? At what point do we feel entitled to contribute to the mess, to interject ourselves at a degree that only causes more problems? At what point do we set down our cameras and understand that the feelings of those directly involved outweighs our need to know, our deadlines, our editors? At what point do we step back and hold the story’s characters in our arms, instead of clutching the camera or the pen, attempting to immortalize our subjects?”