UMC surgeons en route to fast food save life instead
08:31 PM MST on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
By Alexis Huicochea / Arizona Daily Star
A pregnant doctor’s craving for tater tots very likely saved the life of a man shot in the chest during a road rage incident last week.
Before reaching Sonic and the fried potatoes on Friday, University Medical Center surgeons Orazio Amabile and Cristy Smith heard a series of loud pops as they waited to make a left turn at East Grant Road and North Campbell Avenue.
Amabile said he saw two vehicles smashing into each other and that the drivers made their way onto the sidewalk and were “out of control.”
“It was straight out of a movie,” Amabile said in an interview on Tuesday. “I told Cristy, I think that guy got shot and I think we should follow that car.”
When they found it in a nearby neighborhood, there was blood on the seats and the air bags were deployed. Amabile said he then noticed a man lying on a porch, bleeding, with his head propped up against a home.
“I walked up to him and said hi,” Amabile said. “He said hi. I said ‘It looks like you’ve been shot,’ and he says ‘yeah.’ ”
The man, who police have not identified, was “pasty white” and having trouble breathing, Amabile said. Amabile lifted the man’s shirt and saw a bullet hole.
Amabile told Smith to call 911. At the same time, he called the hospital and advised them to get operating room 3 ready because the patient would only live for three or four minutes more.
An ambulance sped Amabile, Smith and the victim to UMC. They rushed through the emergency room and straight into the operating room, where the man stopped breathing and lost a pulse.
After establishing an airway, Smith, Amabile and a trauma team opened the man’s chest and got to work.
The bullet did not go through the heart, Amabile said. The doctors were able to stabilize the man and save his life.
“He is the luckiest man alive,” Amabile said. “The bullet went through a major artery and he bled significantly — he bled three-quarters of his blood volume into his chest. I truly believe he would have died if we were not there.”
Instead, on Tuesday the man was doing well, “sitting up and talking,” Amabile said.
Amabile believes that he and Smith were in the right place at the right time.
“I didn’t think about the danger of getting involved at the time,” he said. “I knew he was fading out and I think if you have someone who is in need, who is dying, it’s an obligation to do our job and try to save his life. It’s what we’ve spent so many years training for.”
On Wednesday, Tucson Police said they still hadn’t caught the gunman. It is unclear what sparked the incident but police say the suspect cut off the victim before shooting him at one location and then firing more rounds at the victim’s vehicle.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME, the anonymous tip line of the Pima County Attorney’s Office.
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