He Was Shot by a Stranger but Treated Like a Criminal When He Reached the ER

When Greg Jackson Jr. thinks about the night he was shot, the most painful part of the memory isn’t that he almost died. It’s not the six surgeries he underwent, the half-year bedridden, or the image of his younger cousin using a shirt as a tourniquet to save his life. It’s not even the thought of the gunman. What brings on a flood of resentment is his reception at the hospital. After he was rolled off the ambulance on a stretcher, still clad in his bloody clothes, police officers—not doctors or nurses—greeted him and began peppering him with questions. Where was he when the shots rang out? What role did he play in the altercation? Why was he out so late? [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] <strong>“I was seen as a criminal first and a person second.”</strong>“I was seen as a criminal first and a person second,” says Jackson, who had been walking home from an engagement party with his cousins when he was shot on April 21, 2013, in Washington, D.C. They turned a corner and startled two men who were arguing. One of the men panicked and opened fire, opening two arteries in Jackson’s right calf. Jackson says he endured three rounds of questioning before he was medically assessed by hospital staff, who did not intervene with police. By the time he was rushed into the operating room, doctors told him he’d lost so much blood that without surgery he would have had about 26 minutes left to live. J...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Guns Health Care healthscienceclimate nationpod Source Type: news