First Place
barbara davidson
The Los Angeles Times
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
"L.A.'s Shooting Season"
Hospitals E.R.'s throughout America have physicians who specialize in saving shooting victims. During summer months the “season of shootings” begins at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.
On June 23 at 2:25 a.m., two teenage gunshot victims walked through the front door Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. They walked through the front door at 2:25 a.m., no EMTs, no police. The hospital staff calls it the homeboy ambulance service: patients brought in with injuries often from gang shootings.While the trauma team assesses the youth Dr. Brant Putnam, a gun shot wound specialist, is racing down from the operating room, where he was performing surgery on another patient. From the entry wound - the size of a nickel - Dr. Brant Putnam guesses that the bullet is a .45, but it's what he can't see that worries him most. The boy, a teenager most likely, lies naked on Bed 2 in a trauma bay at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. His brown skin, slick with sweat, is ashen.
|
