Nurse Manager Put Herself in 'Harm's Way' to Help Scared Young Victim of Catholic School Shooting
A health care supervisor went above and beyond the call as victims of the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting came to the hospital, according to one doctor.
Trauma surgeon Dr. Jon Gayken of Hennepin Healthcare recalled one incident in the aftermath of a shooting the left two children dead and multiple children and adults wounded.
“One of the victims came in and in the emergency department — this was a nurse manager from another unit, didn’t have anything to do with what we would normally respond to — and one of the children were very scared and alone, because everybody was running about doing their jobs,” Gayken said Thursday.
“And she went into the CT scanner with the patient, putting herself basically in the harm’s way of radiation, which normally we would evacuate the room,” he said.
“She put a little lead on and stayed there and held her hand and held her hair while she went through the scanner, so she didn’t have to go through it alone,” he added.
“Those are the types of things we witnessed yesterday,” Gayken said.
Hennepin EMS Chief Marty Scheerer said there were many “unrecognized heroes” Wednesday, including children of Annunciation School who protected other children when transgender shooter Robin Westman began firing into the church while the children were at Mass, according to Fox News.
Westman later killed himself.
“I might be saying too much, but we had one kid that covered up another kid and took a shotgun blast to his back and things like that, and they were helping each other out,” Scheerer said.
“The teachers were amazing. The teachers were getting shot at. They were protecting the kids,” he said, according to NPR.
Annunciation Catholic School Principal Matthew DeBoer said lives were saved by the unsung heroes who emerged as bullets flew.
“Adults were protecting children, older children were protecting younger children,” he said. “It could have been significantly worse without their heroic actions.”
Parent Michael Burt, whose family has five children at the school, said a buddy system that was part of the school culture saved lives.
“So for instance, seventh graders get, say, a third and a first grader, and they walk to church, school Mass, with each buddy [holding] a hand, and they sit next to them in church, teach them how to do church,” he said.
As gunfire erupted, he said, older students knew what to do.
“The first action by those middle schoolers was to push their buddies down under the pew,” Burt said.
“Which is why the middle schoolers were the ones that were standing the longest and were largely the injured, acting in heroism… and then covering the little ones under the pews.”
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