The couple whose passionate kiss was captured in a now-iconic photograph of the Vancouver
The photo shows Scott Jones and Alex Thomas in a fervent embrace on the street between a police line and another officer in full riot gear. Taken by Rich Lam for Getty Images, the picture has been splashed all over the Internet and in media outlets around the world. After leaving the Stanley Cup final, the couple got mired in the violence that swept through downtown Vancouver
Caught between police and rioters, Ms. Thomas was knocked to the ground by an officer’s riot shield as police charged forward, Ms. Jones told The Globe. Her son immediately tried to comfort her and gave her a kiss.
“I just thought, yep, that would be Scott because he’s a bit of a dreamer and he wouldn’t have even known there was a riot going on around him, quite possibly,” Ms. Jones said with a laugh from her home outside Perth Western Australia
The clash left Ms. Thomas with minor scrapes and bruises, she said. “Obviously, it must have been a pretty traumatic thing to be caught up in the middle of it all. It would have been terrible.”
When Ms. Jones first saw the photo on her homepage, www.ninemsn.com, early Friday, she initially didn’t realize it was of her son. After one of her daughters recognized him, she took a second look.
“She just said, ‘Mom, you do realize that is Scott.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I better go back and have another look at it.’ And sure enough, that was my boy.”
The global interest in the picture has “overwhelmed” Mr. Jones and Ms. Thomas, his mother said.
“He sort of said, ‘Oh, sweet, they’ve got a photo’,” Ms. Jones said. “But now that it’s become bigger than Ben-Hur, well, I don’t quite know what he’s going to make of it.”
An avid traveller and aspiring stand-up comedian, the 29-year-old Mr. Jones has been in Canada Vancouver California Australia
“Scott only told me a month or so ago that when he was due to come home in a few months that he was bringing home the best souvenir from Canada ever – he was going to bring home Alex. So that’s pretty exciting,” Ms. Jones said. “And he said if we all behave, we might get to meet her. It looks like it’s not us that’s doing the misbehaving, though.”
