It looks like this was more of a practical consideration - I have never seen woodcuts or anything similar being used to depict recent news stories, especially not online. I’d agree with your second guess that the photographer came back with some poor photos of the group. It looks like it was on a balcony, so maybe there was no picture with all of them together, the lighting was bad etc. The photo editor had to put something together with a bad set of photos and the vice-mayor wasn’t going to go back to visit the woman again to take more photos. It hardly matters in any case; it’s just a human interest story that no one’s going to see. It’s not like it’s going to go viral or anything…
