The Street was filled with many kinds of violence. Most of the time it was not directed at us. But every now and then the street decided to reach out and try and take a bite out of you. It might be a bullet or a knife or just a big crazy, but she would try. It was not enough that she ground at you everyday; she wanted a bigger piece if she could get it, maybe the whole thing if she got lucky. These were the kind of runs that gave you an adrenaline rush on the scene, but made you sit in the corner stare off into space when you got back to the station, and realized just how close it had been. You could almost hear her laughing, maybe next there cowboy. Sometimes we were the intended targets, other times we were simply too close to the real target. I used to say that things got festive, when we had these types of calls. I could not put enough adjectives together to properly describe the intensity, so I went with understatement.
The Street was filled with many kinds of violence. Most of the time it was not directed at us. But every now and then the street decided to reach out and try and take a bite out of you. It might be a bullet or a knife or just a big crazy, but she would try. It was not enough that she ground at you everyday; she wanted a bigger piece if she could get it, maybe the whole thing if she got lucky. These were the kind of runs that gave you an adrenaline rush on the scene, but made you sit in the corner stare off into space when you got back to the station, and realized just how close it had been. You could almost hear her laughing, maybe next time there cowboy. Sometimes we were the intended targets, other times we were simply too close to the real target. I used to say that things got festive, when we had these types of calls. I could not put enough adjectives together to properly describe the intensity, so I went with understatement. It was the middle of the day, a normal assault call with the police on the scene. My guard was down. We were not being careful. Everything is under control. I was examining the back of the patient’s head and did not see the pistol drawn. Jeff the medic off the ambulance did and yelled. “Gun!” We had been dispatched to the ABC Liquor at Gore and Paramore for an assault. We were advised that OPD was on the scene and the scene was secure. We arrived to find the victim sitting in a chair while two police officers standing nearby writing their reports. As we began to exam the man we realized that he had been badly beaten. His face and head were grotesquely swollen. This indicated that he probably had multiple fractures in his face and skull. He could not answer our questions coherently. He was in serious condition. He was beaten about as badly as I had ever seen. He obviously did not know what was happening to him. We needed get him packaged and to the hospital. I stood behind him examining his head. My partner Larry knelt in front of him examining him for additional wounds. Jeff, the paramedic off the ambulance, stood to my left and the patient’s left. The two cops stood to our right busily writing their reports. That is when Jeff had yelled. “Gun.” Larry’s head snapped up in time to stare down the barrel of the pistol the patient was holding. All I saw was Jeff pulling the patients arm out and away bending his wrist backward. As he did he peeled the gun out of the patients hand. It was a police technique. Jeff was in the middle of police standards training. He wanted to be a cop. He disarmed the patient just the way they had taught in the weeks before. The two cops who had been standing there writing their report were now standing there with their mouths open. They had never searched the patient. They knew how close we had all come. The patient obviously thought he was still being attacked. Jeff broke open the pistol and dumped six rounds into his hand. He just looked at the cops, they did not say a word, they just looked sheepish. If Jeff had not grabbed the gun, I am convinced the patient would have shot Larry before anyone could have reacted. Then things would have gotten messy, with us in the line of fire of the cops and the patient. So Jeff saved Larry’s and my life in my opinion that day. When we got back to the station just how close we had come that day really hit me. Being in the middle of a gunfight was not in any training manual I had read. We were finding ourselves on more and more scenes of violence. The department at point was still sending rescues by themselves to scenes of violance. Just two unarmed paramedics. I had been trying to convince them to send an Engine with us if for nothing else protection, and for the extra hands. So I went to my Captain and told him what happened to us. He looked at me and said. “That is what you get paid for.”
Most of the officers considered us more of pain than an asset. There were not that many of us in those days and they were always having to scramble to keep the rescues manned each shift. None of them were paramedics; in fact few if any were EMT’s at that point. So they did not understand what we did or faced and did not care to learn. We were inventing this profession with little or no official help and that included the street survival skills. It was the middle of the day, a normal assault call with the police on the scene. My guard is down. We were not being careful. Everything is under control. I was examining the back of the patient’s head and did not see the pistol drawn. Jeff the medic off the ambulance did and yelled.
“Gun!”
We had been dispatched to the ABC Liquor at Gore and Paramore for an assault. We were advised that OPD was on the scene and the scene was secure. We arrived to find the victim sitting in a chair while two police officers standing nearby writing their reports.
As we began to exam the man we realized that he had been badly beaten. His face and head were grotesquely swollen. This indicated that he probably had multiple fractures in his face and skull. He could not answer our questions coherently. He was in serious condition. He was beaten about as badly as I had ever seen. He obviously did not know what was happening to him. We needed get him packaged and to the hospital.
I stood behind him examining his head. My partner Larry knelt in front of him examining him for additional wounds. Jeff, the paramedic off the ambulance, stood to my left and the patient’s right. The two cops stood to our right busily writing out their reports. That is when Jeff had yelled.
“Gun.”
Larry’s head snapped up to stare down the barrel of the pistol the patient was holding. All I saw was Jeff pulling the patients arm out and away bending his wrist backward. As he did he peeled the gun out of the patients hand. It was a police technique. Jeff was in the middle of police standards training. He wanted to be a cop. He disarmed the patient just the way they had taught in the weeks before.
The two cops who had been standing there writing their report were now standing there with their mouths open. They had never searched the patient. They knew how close we had all come. The patient obviously thought he was still being attacked.
Jeff broke open the pistol and dumped six rounds into his hand. He just looked at the cops, they did not say a word, they just looked sheepish. If Jeff had not grabbed the gun, I am convinced the patient would have shot Larry before anyone could have reacted. Then things would have gotten messy, with us in the line of fire of the cops and the patient. So Jeff saved Larry’s and my life in my opinion that day.
When we got back to the station just how close we had come that day really hit me. Being in the middle of a gunfight was not in any training manual I had read. We were finding ourselves on more and more scenes of violence. The department at point was still sending rescues by themselves to scenes of violance. Just two unarmed paramedics. I had been trying to convince them to send an Engine with us if for nothing else protection, and for the extra hands. So I went to my Captain and told him what happened to us. He looked at me and said.
“That is what you get paid for.”
Most of the officers considered us more of pain than an asset. There were not that many of us in those days and they were always having to scramble to keep the rescues manned each shift. None of them were paramedics; in fact few if any were EMT’s at that point. So they did not understand what we did or faced and did not care to learn. We were inventing this profession with little or no official help and that included the street survival skills.
It was a Friday night and the Saturday Night Specials would always come out. It came in as a shooting at Concord and Paramore, just a few blocks north of the incident at the ABC. Paramore also had a liquor store on the corner a block or so north of this address called Liquor World. Our nickname for it was Murder World. Paramore was the center of the rough side of things where desperate people mixed with violent predators in a vicious dance. We were asked to the dance anytime the two connected.
As we neared the scene the we were stopped by the police. They said shots were still being fired at the scene and near the scene. They were wide eyed and wired. We fed off their adrenaline as we sat there waiting. Cop cars would race by lights flashing as other officers responded. It was enough to crank up the volume. To get things really humming before we went in.
Finally after what seemed an eternity we got the all clear and we were told the scene was safe and to go on in. We drove the short few blocks and bailed out of the truck. We arrived to find to find a huge victim illuminated in the flashlights of several cops. In the hard light of the cops flashlights and our headlights the whole scene looked like a black and white picture. The patient looked like a professional football lineman he was so large, it was the first time I had seen someone so large felled by a single .22 caliber gunshot to the chest. I would later learn, as I saw more shootings, just how lethal small caliber weapons were. Small caliber rounds bounce around once they enter the body, lacerating and penetrating all sorts of vital structures and doing much more damage that the big round. With bigger caliber weapons the round generally plows through the body in a straight line. It does not have the velocity to ricochet off bone. Many times it does less damage. So the Dirty Harry’s of the world should be carrying 22 instead of their big 44’s.
The scene was chaotic. Police were running around with their guns drawn shouting at someone down the street. The ambulance had arrived with us and the four of us got right to work. He had no perceptible pulse but his heart still show a rhythm.
More loud shouting by the cops. Then we heard gunshots nearby. Still more shouting by the police as they tried to figure out was going on and who was shooting at whom. They were not doing the firing. Things were getting very festive at this point. We were frantically trying to get this guy ready for transport.
There was a black and white picture of us the next day in the paper. We were all black silhouettes framed in the headlights of one of the trucks. We are on our knees bent over the patient trying to start IV’s. The lead to the story was help arriving in the midst of shooting. It is exactly how I remember that scene in black and white silhouettes frame in the headlights.
We finally got everything done we need to do so we loaded the patient on the stretcher. It was time to load and go. So loaded the patient and got him to the hospital. He died in the emergency room.
Not far from both of those scenes again on Paramore we had a shooting at the Dixie Doodle. It was a innocent, almost silly sounding name for one of the most dangerous bars in Orlando. Countless assaults, shooting, stabbing, cuttings and robberies had occurred at this one small single story concrete block building. It was one of the places that the predators and the desperate did their dance. We were invited to the dance there more than anywhere else.
I had been there more times that I could count on all matter of mayhem over the years. I had been traveled into Station 2 to ride Rescue 2 that night. We received a call for a shooting. The station is only a few blocks away and the dispatcher told us to stage in the station until OPD could secure the scene. I should have known securing the scene at the Dixie Doodle was going to be a challenge to say the least. The building could never hold all of the patrons on any given night and they always spilled out into the parking lot. I had seen as many as two hundred people outside the building, milling around drinking and partying.
We went to the trucks to wait for the dispatch. It was not long before we told the scene was secure and to go on in. We arrived to find the usual chaotic scene the Dixie Doodle. There were hundreds of people milling around excitedly in the parking lot of the little structure. I was on the passenger side of the truck. I went to the compartment on my side of the truck to grab the drug box and airway kit. Just as turned around to find the victim. Four shots rang out.
I have never seen so many people disappear so quickly in my life. Including the other members of the Engine and Rescue. They had ducked behind the trucks. But I was on the wrong side of the truck to do that. The only other people in sight was the victim, an ambulance attendant who had just arrived and police officer with his gun drawn standing next to them. I figured I would head for the only friendly face with a gun I could find. So I hustle over there in a crouch, holding the boxes up so I felt as if I had a little protection. The Lieutenant off the Engine said I looked really funning running and trying hide behind the boxes. I told him it did feel that funny at the time.
The patient had single gunshot wound to the chest. He was coded. The ambulance attendant and I began to work on him immediately. The Engine crew and my partner and we tried to get this guy packaged and out of there as soon as possible. But there were not enough officers on the scene because we were soon surrounded by the crowd that disappeared earlier. Since the shooting had stopped they had returned and were now jostling and threatening us and the police. As we worked they broke out a window on the ambulance. We got the victim on the backboard and got him into the back of the ambulance. In spite of the broken window and the crowd the ambulance driver got us out of there and to the hospital. The engine and rescue left soon after we did clearing the scene so the cops could concentrate on controlling the crowd. The guys at the station gave me a hard time about trying to hide behind the drug box. I must have really looked funny trying to get my two hundred pounds behind a tackle box. I came real close though.
It turned out that another victim had been shot inside the building and was pronounced there at the scene by another paramedic off the ambulance. My patient died. So it turned out to be a double homicide. As I remember the two had gotten into a gunfight and killed each other. The city closed the Dixie Doodle after this incident in an effort to begin to clear up the neighborhood.
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