Even without professional training, Henry knew this was the most valuable footage. Without a second thought, he switched on the front light of his handheld camcorder and rushed at top speed to the injured person already placed on the stretcher. Through the gaps between several firefighters and medical staff, he accurately captured a clear shot of the injured person's face.

The woman lay on the stretcher, letting out weak moans. Much of her golden hair was stained red with blood, and the left side of her face seemed to be one of the injured areas—covered in a bloody, mangled mess, looking quite horrific.

“Blood pressure 95 over 65, heart rate is slow...”

A medical worker was performing the necessary checks. “Pupils dilated...”

Despite a wave of nausea, Henry's hands were remarkably steady. He immediately switched to a close-up lens, recording this scene—comparable to an American splatter film—with perfect accuracy.

However, Henry's filming lasted less than ten seconds.

A living person running into a place like this, with the camcorder's light on—it's hard not to attract attention.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

A rough voice rang out, and then the camcorder lens was blocked by someone in a firefighter's uniform. “What are you doing?”

“Step back, you step back!”

A patrol officer maintaining order quickly walked over. Unlike the firefighters and medical staff, he wasn't polite at all. Pointing at Henry, he barked sternly, “You! Leave here!”

Having spent time in prison, Henry knew American police were nothing like the media portrayed. He quickly switched off the camcorder light, raised one hand, and backed away, saying, “Okay, okay, I'm leaving right now.”

Apparently dissatisfied with how slowly Henry was retreating, the patrol officer followed and gave him a hard shove. “Back up one hundred feet!”

The officer used a lot of force, and since Henry was already backing up, he stumbled over some broken car debris behind him and nearly fell.

Although he was a bit angry, Henry knew better than to argue with the police. Fortunately, he was a mixed-race man and not Black—otherwise, the officer might have pulled a gun on him.

Henry steadied himself and retreated more quickly. The patrol officer stood with hands on hips, looking imposing and overbearing.

After glancing at the officer one more time, Henry turned, bent down, and slipped under the police tape, pushing through the crowd of onlookers and heading toward where he had parked.

Back in the car, Henry took two deep breaths, started the engine, and left the accident scene. After driving a short distance, he found a parking lot by the roadside, pulled in, parked, grabbed the camcorder from the passenger seat, and began reviewing the footage he had just shot.

From the initial filming to being forced out, Henry had recorded nearly three minutes of video. It included not only shots of the burning car and firefighters' rescue efforts, but also close-ups of the injured person—images with considerable visual impact.

For someone with a certain level of professional experience like Henry, shooting footage of this caliber was relatively easy.

Now that he had the video, the camcorder was no longer for sale. Henry left the parking lot, turned a corner, and headed home.

This video only had real value if he could sell it. To do that, Henry needed the contact information for TV station personnel left by his predecessor—all stored on the laptop at home.

The footage also needed some preliminary editing.

Rushing home as fast as possible, Henry ignored his loudly growling stomach and went straight to the studio. He opened his laptop, which had editing software installed. Although his predecessor had been rather foolish, the work equipment was decent. The camcorder used the latest digital storage technology, not old-fashioned tapes.

He removed the heavy storage drive from the camcorder, connected it to the computer with a data cable, and used the editing software to trim the footage, cutting out all the useless parts and mainly keeping what was shot after entering the police line. He saved the edited video back onto the storage drive, then opened a folder on the laptop and found some TV station contacts, dialing several numbers in succession.

Maybe the contacts were too old, or maybe he was just unlucky, but most of the calls Henry made went unanswered, and the few that did pick up weren't very interested.

“Did I just waste all this effort for nothing?”

Henry ran a hand through his short brown hair and dialed another number. After a few rings, someone answered: “Hello, this is Fox Los Angeles Local Channel 6.”

“Hello,” Henry said as simply as possible. “I'm a freelance journalist and I have some footage I just shot...”

The person on the other end sounded busy and spoke very quickly: “Alright, just bring the video over. Do you know our address? You do? Then come over as soon as you can.”

After hanging up, Henry grabbed the storage drive and drove straight to Fox Los Angeles Local Channel 6 in Burbank. Because of the time spent on the road, it was already late at night when he arrived.