Mary Ann Vecchio (born December 4, 1955) is an Italian American respiratory therapist and one of two subjects in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by photojournalism student John Filo during the immediate aftermath of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.

The photograph depicts the 14-year-old Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been fatally shot by the Ohio National Guard moments earlier.

Vecchio had joined the protest while visiting the campus, where she befriended two of the other students who would be hit by gunfire that day: Sandra Scheuer, who was killed, and Alan Canfora, who was wounded in the right wrist.

[1] Vecchio was from an Italian immigrant family who lived in Opa-locka, Florida, where she attended Westview Junior High School at the beginning of 1970.

"[5] Vecchio began hitchhiking her way across the country, sleeping in fields and hippie crash pads with other transient youth, while occasionally working odd jobs for food.

Dazed and wanting to get away, she got on the bus, which drove two hours to Columbus, Ohio, where parents were waiting for their children who were attending Kent State.

She had heard that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking for the girl in the photo, so she didn't tell anyone who she was, imagining that she could disappear if she got to California.

Instead, he reported her to local police, who detained her in juvenile detention as a runaway before sending her back to Opa-locka three weeks after the Kent State shootings.

"[5] Following publication of the photograph through the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review satellite paper Valley Daily News and its subsequent pickup internationally, Florida governor Claude Kirk labelled Vecchio a dissident Communist,[2] stating that she was "part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators" that was "responsible for the students’ death.

Messages received included, "What you need is a good beating until you bleed red", "I hope you enjoyed sleeping with all those Negroes and dope fiends", and "The deaths of the Kent State four lies on the conscience of yourself.

[5] Her family reportedly later sued T-shirt companies for 40 percent of the profits from sales of apparel featuring Filo's photograph.

[7] At age 22, Vecchio moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, married Joe Gillum in 1979, and became a clerk at a casino coffee shop.

[5] In 1995, Vecchio and John Filo met for the first time, when both were scheduled to appear at an Emerson College conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of the shootings.

After graduating, she worked at the Veterans Affairs Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, though she never disclosed that she was the girl in the famous Kent State photo.

Kent State Disturbance set" of play figures with "1 kneeling student" and, in 2006, satiric newspaper The Onion published a fake report under the title, "Kent State Basketball Team Massacred By Ohio National Guard In Repeat Of Classic 1970 Matchup," with Vecchio's face photoshopped over the body of a cheerleader.

[citation needed] Before being published, the photograph was retouched to remove the distracting background fencepost that appeared over Vecchio's head in the original image.