Bringing A Knife To A Gunfight

Well, we got our first double homicide of the year.



My district is known for its share of assaults and crimes but it’s not what we normally expect when we respond to this particular apartment complex. We arrived and followed the police to an upstairs unit. As soon as I walked in the front door I encountered a male in his twenties on the living room floor wearing only boxers and multiple stab wounds. The police said there was another victim in the bedroom and my firefighter went to check on him. I don’t know if this is the case for everyone (if you've ever had the experience), but just about any fireman can pretty much tell if a person is dead when they walk in the room. I can’t explain it, you just know. This guy was dead. Of course, if his physical condition doesn’t cooperate with your from-the-door assessment (rigor mortis, lividity, other obvious signs of death) you have to initiate resuscitation efforts anyway. I checked for rigor and there was just enough stiffness for me to determine death in the field.

I quickly moved into the bedroom to check on the other victim. This one was a male in his early thirties who was fully dressed and slumped unnaturally in the corner of the room. He was also obviously dead with what appeared to be at least two gunshot wounds. He too had just enough rigor to be called dead in the field. I hooked both victims up to the EKG monitor to confirm asystole and printed out the strips for documentation.

My job as paramedic was done and now it was time to try my hand at amateur crime scene investigator. From the way they were dressed and the positions of the bodies I decided that the apartment belonged to the man in the boxers and the other man was an acquaintance or intruder. The men argued and the intruder grabbed a knife (or had one already) and attacked the first man who then ran to the bedroom. The intruder pursued only to find the man had retrieved his gun from the bedroom and took two shots to the chest. The first man then tried to go for help but only made it as far as the living room before collapsing and bleeding out on the floor.

So, even if you bring a knife to a gunfight, you can still tie. That’s how I saw it anyway.