CARACAS — A 21-year-old Venezuelan woman sprinting through eastern Caracas at 2:05 a.m., white shirt, cellphone in hand, fear on her face — that image, captured by Associated Press photographer Matías Delacroix as U.S. military strikes erupted over Venezuela’s capital, appeared on the front pages and websites of news outlets around the world within hours of the operation. The woman in the frame was Mariana Camargo, out with friends when the explosions began. Delacroix had awakened to the same rumbling, grabbed his camera, and run toward the blasts as she ran from them.

The photograph became one of the first images of the American military operation in Venezuela — a campaign that would, within days, result in President Nicolás Maduro being replaced by his vice president following his capture by the Trump administration, according to the AP. For Camargo, the night moved from terror through viral notoriety to an unexpected reunion with the photographer who had caught her mid-stride.

How the photo happened

Camargo told the AP she had been among roughly nine people on the street when a passing driver stopped and shouted a warning. “A woman arrived in a big truck and she screeched to a stop and said ‘kids what are you doing here, go home they’re bombing!’” Camargo said. “We were like nine people and we were like ‘Well, let’s run.’ We started to run and passed by here.”

As the group sprinted through the street, Delacroix was already positioned on the sidewalk, having run out of his building minutes earlier at the sound of the strikes. Camargo said she noticed him as the group passed.

Delacroix described the moment he locked onto her image among the people running.

“What caught my attention was how you were running, with your cellphone and clearly scared,” Delacroix told Camargo when the two met days later at the same spot. “I have photos of your friend that was behind you, but between the two photos, yours was the one that expressed the most what was happening,” he said, according to the AP.

The photo goes viral

As the photograph spread across international media, Camargo’s friends began recognizing her through a WhatsApp group message.

“Am I tripping or is that Nana Mariana???” one friend wrote, using a Venezuelan nickname for Mariana. “IT IS NANA!” another responded shortly after, according to the AP account.

The image was subsequently turned into a meme with the words “the gringos have arrived!” superimposed on it, Camargo told the AP.

Her reaction was layered. “Now I laughed, and I laughed when I saw the photo. My mom laughed, my friends too. They made stickers and memes and all that,” Camargo said. “But I still see the videos of what happened that day, of the explosions, I hear the sounds and I still feel this sense of panic.”

The reunion

Camargo reached out to Delacroix via Instagram on Sunday, a day after the strikes. The two met in person on Tuesday at the same Caracas street corner where the photograph was taken, according to the AP. They parted with a hug.

“Crazy things always happen to me,” Camargo said. “Of course I end up on the street during a bombing and I go viral. It’s nuts.”