A hospital staff member went into a CT scanner with one of the young victims of the Minneapolis church shooting and "held her hand" so she "didn't have to go through it alone," a trauma surgeon revealed Thursday.
Dr. Jon Gayden of Hennepin Healthcare told reporters that "Those are the types of things we witnessed yesterday" as the injured were seeking medical care in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church.
"One of the victims came in and in the emergency department -- [there] 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," Gayden said.
"And she went into the CT scanner with the patient, putting herself basically in the harm's way of radiation, which normally would evacuate the room. 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.
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"We can describe the things that we saw from our team members and from our hospital, and it was inspiring," Gayden also said. "Taking care of one child that's injured is difficult. Eight of them is nearly impossible, but it happened yesterday."
There also were a lot of "unrecognized heroes" Wednesday, including children who were protecting other children during the shooting, according to Hennepin EMS Chief Marty Scheerer.
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"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.
Hennepin Healthcare CEO Thomas Klemond said as of early Thursday afternoon, "We currently have nine patients that were involved in the shooting yesterday.
"Six of those patients are in satisfactory condition. Five of those patients are children. We have two patients in serious condition, one adult and one child. And we have one child in critical condition presently," he continued.
"This is a horrible, unspeakable event that affected our community, affected our workforce, and obviously affected those directly involved. So our hearts go out to the folks that are directly affected," Klemond added. "At Hennepin, this is what we do. We're a trauma center. We take care of, the worst of the worst for injuries. So this is part of our daily work, but we're also human."
