Thursday, October 1, 2009

Gang Related Violence

Over the summer I worked as an EMT for an ambulance company in Lorain County in the city of Lorain. There were many shootings that took place, and it was all gang related. People were constantly getting assaulted and hurt because of the gangs. They also had many feuds going on between them, so they would go back and forth shooting each other.

A scary incident happened right in the ER. Gang members were being brought in by the ambulance and as they were taken through the ER their rivalry gang wanted to make sure that they were dead, so they followed the ambulance and they shot them again as they were on the cot being unloaded. Security was there and was armed but the gang member still got away. The entrance to the ER became a crime scene and detectives did their investigation.

Experiencing this was new to me but to the other EMTs in Lorain it was normal. In Athens County shootings are very rare and when they do happen they are accidental or it’s a hunting accident. I thought this was really scary, but to the others it just seemed like another shooting. You can read more about an incident that took place b y clicking the link:

http://www.cleveland.com/shooting/index.ssf/2009/06/two_killed_three_wounded_in_se.html

6 comments:

  1. I guess you have to copy and paste the link!!

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  2. You can hyperlink it. =)

    http://www.hyperlinkcode.com/make-hyperlink.php

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  3. By the way, reading about this is craziness. Wow.

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  4. It's so crazy coming from a safe rural area that this stuff happens all the time in other places and people view it as just another ordinary day there, they have conformed to this behavior.

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  5. These types of actions and reactions (gang violence, retaliatory gunfire, and constant negative interactions between rival gangs) are interesting to me. The emotional aspects make sense in the context of certain communities and intra-personal structures; however, I cannot logically fathom following an ambulance to the hospital to make sure that the person I already shot was dead. It is interesting that this particular person was not only concerned with getting revenge and hurting someone, but was looking for one specific result: death. (And that this person was willing to so openly defy the law and bring such violence to a place like a hospital.)

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