Timing is everything. Or at least it is in this story. Last Saturday, LA Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske found herself amidst the mayhem of a drive-by shooting in Southern Los Angeles. Not a great moment for Hennessy-Fiske, but an auspicious one for the even unluckier Rashaun Williams, one of the bullet’s victims.
For some reason the journalist decided to break character, and got involved with the bleeding stranger. She was going to put her first aid training to use, a skill set she never needed to put into action while on assignment in Baghdad in 2006. But now she was going to need them in her own backyard. She recounts the events in detail for the LA Times:
“Someone had ripped up a white T-shirt and tied the strips of cloth around her legs, below her shorts, as tourniquets. I put my hands on the bloodstained rags and pressed. She cringed but did not complain. I had taken a first aid course before going to Baghdad on assignment in 2006. I hadn’t needed to use the training in Iraq. I never imagined I would need it in Los Angeles. I remembered I was supposed to make sure the victim was alert and her airways clear. I asked her if she could breathe. She said yes but that the sun was boiling the pavement beneath her.”
“‘I need to move,’ she moaned, tugging at her pink tank top. ‘I got to get out of here!’”
“Several people offered to carry her into the shade. But I had been taught never to move an injured person unless absolutely necessary. Her blood was already coating the ground. ‘How many times have you been shot?’ I asked, my voice trembling.”
“‘Twice,’ she said, once in each leg.”
“‘Do you have any other injuries?’”
“‘No,’ she said.”
“I looked at her face, now shining with sweat. I could see she was worried the shooters would return. So was I.”
Hennessey-Fiske was involved now, but not merely as an objective observer, she was connected on a human level.
She was in the neighborhood reporting on the vigil being held for Woodrow Player, Jr., a 22-year-old father of three, who was gunned down a day earlier by the LAPD. And although Player had ties to the Crips, was out on parole, and in a foot chase with the cops, it would turn out that he had been reaching for a cell phone, not a gun.
Family and friends held a memorial in the alley where he had been shot Hennessy-Fiske recounts, “They were tearful and angry, shouting that he did not have to die. I walked over to talk to them.” Then she heard what was initially mistaken for popping balloons, but again, drawing on her experience in Iraq she knew this wasn’t the sound of a balloon. She ran toward the fallen bodies, which is where she met Rashaun Williams, to whom she applied tourniquets to try and stop the bleeding. Molly told Rashaun to squeeze her hand when it got bad.
Help finally arrived and soon enough Williams and the other victims were on their way to the hospital, but not before Hennessy-Fiske handed her business card to Williams. She watched the ambulances pull off, then returned to the newsroom to do her job. She wrote the story, filed it and went home. But the next day, she couldn’t forget what she had seen. She kept thinking about Rashaun and finally called the hospital.
“As soon as Williams heard my voice, she started sobbing.”
“‘Molly,’ she said. ‘You have to come over here.’”
“I cleared my schedule and drove to Inglewood. When I walked into Williams’ hospital room, she gave me a big smile. She had tied her hair up in a silky flowered scarf. Morphine flowed through an IV in one of her arms. Both her legs were swaddled in blankets.”
To literally add insult to injury, an angered Rashaun told Molly of the inaccurate TV reports, claiming that she and the other by-standers were gang-related. But this isn’t the case at all. She’s a 29-year-old home health aide and school crossing guard, who recently moved with her 6-year-old daughter to a safer neighborhood. There was nothing she did to deserved this.
Williams eventually returned home on the slow road to recovery and Molly drove out to Lancaster for a visit. They chatted about disability, redecorating the bathroom, and postponing certain plans for her daughter that would now have to wait due to her injuries. After a while, Molly could see that her new friend was getting tired and she decided to head out. And although she knew they were in most ways still nothing more than strangers, it didn’t matter, she says, ” I cared what happened to her, and she knew it.”
Molly leaned in for a hug, and as she pulled back, she says Rashaun held on tight and said, “You were like my guardian angel,” she said before letting go. “Be careful out there.”
Occasionally the ugliest of events reap some beautiful benefits.
Photo by T Altered Art, courtesy of Creative Commons via Flickr