Three days after he was brutally attacked at the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) by a group of men who burst into the Accident and Emergency Department demanding that doctors save their loved one’s life, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) on Thursday shared his horror story of how a routine night on the job, turned violent and nearly deadly.

As a caller into the Love 97 daily talk show issues of the day yesterday, the still unidentified EMS worker recounted the brutal beating he endured in the morning hours of Monday August 11, a physical fight that he said left him bloodied, swollen and suffering a concussion.

The Bahama Journal first reported on Tuesday of the violence that erupted at the PMH A and E department after a shooting victim was rushed there for medical attention.

The EMS said as he and other workers assisted another patient, a car sped into the hospital’s parking lot with the occupants rushing out saying they needed help as a woman in the car had been shot.

The worker added that he and his partner then began offering assistance to this second victim when her friends turned on them.

“I rendered assistance for them,” he said. “I got them a bed and we pushed her into the trauma room. We told them they could not come into the trauma room but they barged their way in.

“When they barged their way in, one of the guys jumped in the doctor’s face and told him in obscene language, to take the bullet out of his girlfriend. So the doctor in turn told him that he had to leave the room in order for him to deal with her.

It was that order, the EMS said, that set the men off and it was then that they allegedly attacked the doctor.

Standing just a few inches away, the worker said he now became their second target.

“He (the doctor) was there struggling for his life and I was standing on the side of him and the other guy just jumped me,” he recalled. “He just jumped on top of me, I couldn’t even defend myself.

“He jumped right on top of me and started punching me and kicking me, I struggled as I fell because water was on the floor. And at one point both of them were on top of me, just punching and kicking. I was just trying to defend for my life.”

The worker says he does not recall seeing any officers or security guards during the ordeal, leaving some of the patients and their family members to help fight off the attackers.
He said the scene in the hospital was so chaotic, that a number of seriously injured patients, some gunshot victims, were running from their beds trying to flee the scene.

Also on the show was the EMT’s wife who said it saddens her when she realises that, today, hers could have been another family planning a funeral.

“For my husband to come home at 5:23 a.m. drenched in blood, it saddens my heart to know that I could’ve been a widow,” she said.

“Here it is, my husband and doctor rendering care to persons in the hospital have to now be afraid for their lives. The people who are here to save lives are now afraid.”

The woman said she is now tasked with caring for her husband whose injuries have him unable to perform basic tasks for himself.

“It saddens me to know that a person who is employed cannot go to work and perform their duties,” she said.

“In the line of their work, knowing that we had a nurse who died in the same way, it truly saddens me.”

Central Detective Unit (CDU) Head Superintendent Paul Rolle said on Thursday that the matter was transferred from the Central Police Station to CDU where investigations are underway.

It is unclear if any arrests were made in this case.

PMH officials said a release on the matter was to be sent out on Wednesday but that had not happened up to press time.