Road Trip

I'm wrapping up a 72 hour shift, and my partner, Vince, looks at me and asks if I want to take a random road trip. With 4 days off and nothing planned, I say sure.

After we go off duty, I run over to his house and help him lug his stuff 7 stories down to the parking lot. We knock out a quick round of rock-paper-scissors (which, incidentally, is how many decisions are made on the squad) and I jump behind the wheel for the first part of the drive.

12 hours later, I'm still driving. He's racked out in the seat next to me, no doubt dreaming of a world where our patients never have maggots on them and GI bleeds smell like roses.

As I drive through Albuquerque on Interstate 40, I see a bunch of brake lights blink on a quarter mile ahead of us. It's after midnight, and while there is some light roadway maintenance work going on, there's no obvious reason for the whole freeway to come to a standstill.

A minute later I make it to the bottleneck.

A midsize sedan has rear-ended an 18 wheeler, and the tow truck operator is preparing for the vehicle recovery. Or so it appears. A quick survey of the scene reveals that there is no EMS, fire or law enforcement presence. No flares, no cones, nothing but a lone tow operator that's clearly overwhelmed.

The tow truck has clearly happened upon the wreck, which has just happened. Outstanding.

I wake Vince up, and he groggily tells me that another crew can handle the wreck. I tell him we're off duty and he really needs to wake up. After a moment of confusion, he realizes what's happening.

I pull the car behind the cones separating the construction work zone from the freeway and get out of the car.

The scene is pretty contained and presents as a relatively simple incident. We have a passenger vehicle vs a standard 53 foot big rig trailer hauling electronic goods for a major retailer. The truck driver is uninjured, and the driver of the sedan has self extricated through the hole left by the roof being sheared off of his car. The truck driver states that he was stopped at the time of the collision, and the lack of skid marks from the sedan, coupled with the extensive damage to the car, seem to suggest that the sedan was traveling at highway speed.

The tow operator's dispatch had already advised the appropriate folks of the incident, so I don't bother calling 911.

We approach the patient and hold C-spine. As I begin my assessment, an unmarked Crown Vic screeches to a stop next to the tow truck with it's stealth lights blazing. I figure it's Albuquerque PD or New Mexico State Police, but to my surprise and dismay, a 40-something lady in street clothes jump out and says, "I'm a retired EMT, how can I help?"

Great. A 'retired' EMT? What does that even mean? And why is she in a cop car?

Whatever. She hands me gloves, and my opinion of her markedly improves. She also had a c-collar, which was helpful.

So back to the assessment. The patient is a male in his mid-thirties who is alert and oriented to person, place, time and event. He admits to recent alcohol consumption, and complains of ear pain. Physical exam reveals that his left ear is nearly torn in half, but is otherwise unremarkable. Had he been sitting upright, he would have been killed. Since he was slumped over in a drunken stupor, though, his ear was turn in half. The luck o' the drunk, I guess.

Vince walks up to the destroyed sedan to make sure there's nobody else in the car, and get an idea of the mechanism of injury. Ha. So while he pokes his around around the wreckage, I start talking to the patient. He wants to call his mom and let her know that he's okay, so I dial his phone for him, as his drunken finger fumbling wasn't very productive.

While the patient cries to mom, a New Mexico State Trooper pulls up and rolls his window down.

"Howdy. What's going on here?"
"Not too much. One patient, minor injuries."
"That's it? Okey-doke. We've got a fatal outside town, and I need to get to that. APD will be here when they get here."

Before I can reply, he's off like a flash. Great. So we still have no flares, no cones, and a couple of unequipped first responders.  Thank God we at least had the tow driver and 'retired' EMT directing traffic.

As the trooper beats feet away from the scene, Vince walks back up. The patient is telling him mom that he almost made it to Louisiana, and Vince's eyes go wide.

"He's altered! Louisiana?!?" I laugh and point behind Vince at a large road sign:

(Not my picture - originally posted at crosscountryroads.com)

Funny stuff.

So fire and EMS show up, followed by a couple APD units and another trooper. I gave a quick report, and faded into the background.

I'm not typically one to stop, unless A) I witnessed the wreck, or B) ALL of the following are true:

1) There are no responders on scene
2) There are obvious injuries (or a significant mechanism. Snicker.)
3) It is safe for me to do so.

In ten years, I've stopped at a total of 4 wrecks. There have been a few that looked legit but were unsafe to stop at, so I made 911 calls giving the accurate location and a brief size-up based on what I saw while passing the scene.

The other three I've stopped for are interesting stories in their own right, so look for those in the future.

As Vince and I got back on the road, we laughed about his mistake on the whole altered-Louisiana bit. We also talked about the retired EMT. She was very eager to please, and wasn't nearly the nuisance I initially thought she would be. But still... why the undercover cop car?

The rest of the trip was uneventful, and thankfully we never came across the fatal that NMSP had told us about as he flew through the scene.

Apologies for the absence...

Dealing with some pretty major family health issues -- should be back to posting here again shortly.

911 is your friend (at least when used appropriately)

So I'm taking a much deserved break from work. I grab a tall frosty glass of lemonade and sit down to watch a little TV.

Now, I don't watch too much TV, especially when I'm on vacation. I try to stay informed, though, so I flip it to the news.

I was up at the woods in the middle of nowhere, and Fairview is the closest metro area. So, it's Fairview news or bust.

In the middle of some story about the economy, they interrupt with breaking news. SkyView 3 was flying over Metro Center when they saw some black smoke near Washington Park. They flew over to the fire and found a gas station involved in a rapidly developing fire.

There was a small crowd of bystanders watching the fire burn, but FFD was nowhere in sight. After 30 seconds or so of random newscaster babbling, fire still isn't on scene.

I call into the Comm Center to give an update on the fire's size and rate of spread.

Guess what?

Nobody had even reported the fire! All those knuckleheads standing around watching it burn, plus the news anchors talking about the FFD's slow response time, and nobody thought to actually notify the fire department. Unbelievable.

So from more than 100 miles away, I ended up being the first person to call it in. It's amazing that folks'll call 911 at 3 in the morning for the flu that they've had for a week but won't call in a significant structure fire in the middle of broad daylight.

Sheesh.

Wrong place, wrong time... (Part 2)

So, I've been trying to wrap my head around this for a few days. I'm still floored at the waste and tragedy here.

I hate gang violence.

Last week I posted about the senseless shooting and death of a young man in Centennial Park. I closed the post by saying that I hoped they caught the kid's murderer. The good news is that they did.

Unfortunately, though, the story gets worse.

Convinced that FPD wouldn't devote much time to the murder investigation of their family member, the kid's uncle and cousin (the uncle's son) decide to do some investigation of their own. While I can certainly understand their impatience and desire for a swift resolution to the case, FPD's Detective Division is top-notch. While they may get overwhelmed, their investigators work tirelessly to make this city a better place to live.

I wish they could have been a little more patient and allowed Fairview's Finest the chance to close the case.

Uncle and cousin had a pretty good idea who the suspect was, and they told other family members about their plan to locate the suspect, notify FPD of his whereabouts and (if necessary) detain him until the cops arrived.

Take note, folks: This plan wasn't remotely safe, even on paper. But planning on detaining a known gang member that carries a handgun AND has killed already this week? Cooler heads should have prevailed.

Uncle and cousin locate the suspect's vehicle about a mile and a half from where the first shooting occurred. Uncle pulls out his cell phone and calls the victim's mom (his sister) to tell her they found the suspect. He says they're going to follow the suspect and call FPD, and hangs up the phone.

At the same time and less than 1/10 mile away, I'm sitting in the station watching a movie. We hear two distinct pops, a brief pause, another pop, another pause, and then one final pop. We pause the movie and turn up the FPD radio.

Sure enough, FPD sends three units to a location right down the street from our station for multiple 911 calls of shots fired with two victims down.

Crap.

I happen to be working in a bigger station with two assigned ambulances, and we advise our dispatch that we copy PD's traffic and will be staging in place inside the relative safety of our station. The four of us walk out to the apparatus bay and fire up the ambulances and standby until PD clears us into the scene.

About two minutes later the cops advise that we're clear to enter. The bay doors go up, we pull out of the station, and advise that we're on scene. We park a whopping 500 feet from the day room where we'd been watching a movie just a few moments before. Yikes.

The story we get later is this: Apparently uncle and cousin pulled up beside the suspect's vehicle at a red light. Suspect realized what was going on and fired two rounds into the uncle's head from a range of less than 10 feet. Cousin watches his dad die, and flees the car. The suspect fires a round into the cousin's back to bring the kid down, gets out of his car, walks up to the injured teen and fires one more round into the kid's head, executing him.

The suspect apparently knew or at least assumed that the police had already been notified, and just waited for the police to arrive and arrest him.

So that's how we pull up on a very marginally secured scene with a suspect at gunpoint but not in custody. Lovely.

By unspoken agreement the other crew goes to the uncle and we go to the cousin. Both men have injuries that are incompatible with life, but each of them has pulses still. As we begin working our patient, PD gets the suspect into custody.

I'm not a fan of contaminating crime scenes or transporting traumatic cardiac arrests, but it looks like both scenarios are gonna play out here.

Despite the certainty that both men are going to succumb to their wounds, our protocols demand that we transport unless obvious signs of death are present.

So we package the patients for transport and take off for U-Med. By the time we arrive at the trauma center, both patients have arrested. The trauma team calls both patients shortly after arrival, and the poor family has lost 3 members in just under 48 hours.

The suspect knew it was only a matter of time before he got caught, and he knew that the gang is just as strong inside prison as it is on the outside, so he just gave up. Unfortunately, his poor choices devastated an entire family. And all because of an innocent smile at a pretty girl.