A couple of years ago, my partner and I were assigned to a
shooting. When we turned onto the address’ block, we found plenty of law but we had beat the fire department to the scene. A cruiser blocking the street pulled aside to
let us pass. We parked in front of the
response house and I grabbed the jump kit.
We approached the front door and a police officer stopped
us. “I only need one of you for a
pronouncement,” he told us. More people
in a homicide scene complicates the investigation, so police will occasionally ask us to
just put one medic into the crime scene in cases of obvious death.
I turned to my partner with a smile. “Hold my kit, son.” I handed him the jump kit. My smile broadened – that jibe got to
him. I essentially told him that I was
the important one and he was like my assistant. It is probably something that you wouldn’t get if you hadn’t been there,
but it still makes me chuckle. Especially the irritated look on his face. Hold my kit, son…
I stepped off the front porch into the living room of the
house. It looked like a
slaughterhouse. There was blood everywhere. I don’t think I had ever seen this much blood
in one room, let alone splashed on the ceiling, all four walls, and the
floor. The house was trashed, as
well. Apparently the victim put up a
fight for a long while before being shot several times with a shotgun.
The victim’s body was on the far side of the living room,
next to the kitchen and at the entrance of the hallway that led to the
bedrooms. The cop pointed out the path
he wanted me to follow to access the body and explained how he knew he only
required one medic for a pronouncement: “Should be a simple pronouncement. I’ve been watching him closely and I’m
sure he’s dead. He hasn’t taken a breath
in at least ten or fifteen seconds.”
Are you shitting me? I turned and looked at my partner,
slack-jawed with disbelief. Did he hear that too? He grinned and handed me my kit back. “You may need this.” I just stood there and stared at him for a
second. “I’ll get the wheels and set the bus up,” he told me.
I made my way to the patient and reached down to feel for a
carotid pulse. I felt a weak,
tachycardiac carotid pulse, because of course this guy had a pulse. He was in rough shape. Without getting into specifics, a person can
sustain quite a bit of trauma from a few shotgun blasts and a long
fistfight. Dude was a mess. He had agonal breathing and had a mess of
blood and teeth in his oropharynx. His
trachea didn’t look quite right, either.
I quickly checked and mentally cataloged his injuries and dug
into my kit for the intubation equipment. I squatted at his head and threw down a flat gunslinger tube. It may still be the fastest intubation I have
ever performed, to this day. Laryngoscope into his mouth, take a look, place the tube; bam, bam, bam. Three and a half seconds. Gunslinger.
I hooked the BVM to the tube and gave him a few
breaths. I listened to the patient’s
breath sounds and the tube was good. Boom shakalaka. I felt like I was at a spot
where I could wait for more help. Firefighters should be on scene any time now to give me a hand with extrication.
It was at about this time that I noticed a door at the
entrance to the hallway. It looked like
it would lead into the basement. I can
definitively say I noticed it at this point because the door handle on the
basement door jiggled and turned a little bit.
The police officer lost all the color in his face. He turned white as a sheet, looked at me, and
said one of the scariest things I’ve heard: “Oh. Shit. This house isn’t cleared yet.”
Wait. What?!? This horror movie scene isn’t cleared yet?!?
The officer drew his pistol, brandished it, and began
screaming commands at the still-closed door. “Come out of the basement! Come
out slowly! Show me your hands! Get out
of there!” His voice was hitting higher
and higher pitches. This officer was
freaked out. I was pretty sure he was
going to put four or five blind shots through the door in a line from bottom to
top. “Come out of the basement slowly!”
I stupidly sat there, bagging the patient with my mouth hanging
open, and watching the officer scream commands at a door. I didn’t even think of moving to a safer
place. Because I am dumb and, to be
honest, I was scared. I just bagged the
patient, dumbfounded.
Right then, the first of the firefighters walked through the
front door. The following “conversation”
occurred:
Me: “Cops! I need a
lot of cops!”
Firefighter: “What?”
Me (shouting, with my voice cracking a little): “More
cops! More cops! Get more cops!”
Firefighter (looking confused): “What do you mean?”
Me (shrieking, probably at the top of my lungs):
“Badges! Guns! Get cops! Get more cops in here!”
Firefighter (muttering, shaking his head, and walking out the door):
“These paramedics are assholes…”
The firefighters apparently thought I only wanted cops in the house, because they left. They got into their fire truck and went back
to their station. They returned to
service without telling anyone else that they had just saw a police officer screaming
commands at a closed door with his gun out and a panicking paramedic was screaming the
word COP.
Eventually, the scene got itself all figured out. In the end, it worked out that the door that
jiggled wasn’t a basement door. It was
outside door. Another cop was in the
back yard checking it was locked. He
never even knew that he caused so much drama inside the house. I'm glad the indoor officer didn't pop some blind shots through the door before he opened it. I bet he is too.
My partner returned and we extricated the patient with help
from the police. The cops sent two
officers in the ambulance to the hospital, so when the patient lost pulses I put
them to work on CPR and bagging. For my
part, I missed six IV attempts and handed off the patient at the hospital. (This was pre-IO and mid-ETTeveryone.) Definitely not my best work, especially
communication-wise.
Except for the tube. Man, that was an awesome tube. Friggin' gunslinger.
