The Impact of Domestic Violence on EMS providers

 

 

How does domestic violence impact our communities?  Often people put a financial meaning behind this such as: court costs, housing inmates, taxes and property destruction.

I’ve been a paid and volunteer Emergency Medical Technician for 12 years.  I will tell you how domestic violence impacted me as a pre-hospital care provider in the community.  This is a true story that took place in Pennsylvania.

About 10 years ago, I was dispatched to assist the state police at a crime scene. The company I worked for at the time also did coroner transports.  We were given no additional information except for the name of the road.  I knew the exact road due to living by the southern piece of the county; and I knew very well that there were no homes located on it.  I assumed it was a car accident.  

 Arriving at the scene there were numerous state police cars and vans. I got out of the ambulance and walked towards the troopers.  The sun had set and it was dark except for the police car lights. The rain was pouring down and it was starting to thunder and lighting. I looked and saw a body bag wrapped in a tarp near the edge of the road.  The person couldn’t be very big I thought, it was maybe 120lbs and under 5’4”, a bit smaller than me at the age of 20.   I asked, “What happened here? Was the car towed away already?”  A trooper responded, “No, a murder. Please don’t move the tarp or ask to remove our bag because we are preserving evidence.” 

The next day I got online to read the newspaper.  Front page was an article about a murder-suicide. A mother had murdered her boyfriend (he was not their father), her three children and then turned the gun on herself.  Before killing her 13 year-old daughter, she had killed her boyfriend while he slept.  The mother continued her rampage by picking up the unsuspecting 13 year-old girl and taking her to a lonely road, where she shot her execution style.  She drove off, leaving her child’s body behind and continued her murdering rampage.  She went onto kill her two other teenage children then committed suicide. There were pictures of all three murdered children accompanying the newspaper article.

 I stared at a picture of a beautiful 13 year-old girl with bright blonde hair and a chubby face.  My stomach turned sour and I began to cry.  I picked up a child’s body and took her to a cold morgue.  A child is dead. All I could think was that a 13 year-old girl will never finish high school or go to her prom.  She’ll never go to college, have a career, get married or become a mother one day.  Her life was cut short due to domestic violence.   

Almost 10 years have gone by, but the image of her school picture is still burned into my mind. When I hear her name used, I think of her.  When I drive by the intersections to that road, I think of her.  I go back to the exact scene in my head:  A dark stormy spring night on that back road with police cars everywhere.  I can see the body on the side of the road.  It’s like a movie I play over in my mind every time I pass that road. 

That is how domestic violence impacts our communities. It’s not always the financial costs on society/communities.  It’s the emotional impact on people. People just like me.  She is just one of the many reasons I come to work every day at Transitions.   Please join me in saying No More to domestic violence.

Submitted by Sara L.