Soldier springs into action after downtown shooting
Corporal home for Thanksgiving gives first aid to gunshot victim
When Cpl. Brandon James Liddy heard gunshots in downtown Windsor early Friday morning, the trained soldier slipped into autopilot.
First he took cover behind a wall outside the club where he had been attending a networking event. Then he looked out to see what was happening.
“The shooter was running away,” said Liddy, an imagery technician for the Canadian Armed Forces stationed in Gatineau, Que. He was home to celebrate family Thanksgiving in Tecumseh.
Liddy saw the victim walk to the side of the road, stumble and then collapse. “Immediately, I went over to him — I knew something was really, really wrong.”
Windsor Police said Monday the victim, a man in his mid-20s, remained in critical condition in hospital after being shot multiple times near Ouellette Avenue and Maiden Lane around 1:45 a.m. Friday.
Liddy took off his suit coat and got down on his knees to introduce himself to the victim, who was still conscious. Liddy told the man he was with the Canadian Armed Forces and trained in first aid, and then asked if he could help. The man said yes.
“I went through the motions of doing first aid, feeling for wetness, the blood, and feeling for holes in his clothes for gunshot wounds.” Liddy removed his belt and used it as a tourniquet after finding a gunshot wound in the man’s arm. When he found two more wounds in the man’s chest, he ordered a bystander to take the shirt off his back to patch the holes. Another bystander held pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding. Liddy performed first aid on the man until emergency personnel arrived to take over. “There was no actual hesitation,” said Liddy. While others were asking if the three bangs had come from a cap gun, he was running to help.
“After doing it in practice over 10 years being in the military, it was an automatic thing,” he said. “I used the training that I’ve done so many times in a scenario in real life.”
Word of Liddy’s heroics spread quickly over social media after he published a tweet detailing the events of his first hour in Windsor. He included three pictures of small bloodstains on his pants, sleeve, and shoes. He’s been receiving messages of thanks from strangers on the internet ever since. “Getting that back from people is touching,” he said, though he’s had to silence his phone a few times to combat the flood of notifications. As a member of the 12-person unit called Combat Camera, responsible for Canadian Forces photos and videos of anything from ceremonies to warfare operations, Liddy said he is not used to having the spotlight on himself.
Liddy’s great-grandfather, Col. Paul Poisson, the first mayor of Tecumseh, was a field surgeon in the First and Second World Wars. Royal Canadian Legion Branch 261 in Tecumseh is named after him. “He’s always been an inspiration to me,” said Liddy, who has a military portrait of Poisson hanging above the piano in his home in Ottawa. Poisson’s officer’s sword and legion beret also hang with the portrait. Liddy said Poisson is the reason he joined the military. “He was such an outstanding person,” he added. Poisson died before his great-grandson was born. “I always question what I’m doing stacked up against what I think he would have done.” Since Friday, Liddy has posted two videos to his Facebook page using the hashtag TakeBackWindsor to encourage others to help those in need.
“People should be standing up for their community,” he said, describing what he hopes people might take away from his actions. “The moment people stop doing that is when this sort of thing happens. People start coming in with drugs, crime, gun violence, stabbing. You need to push back to keep the darkness back.”
In one of his videos, Liddy said: “If you follow your moral compass and make sure it’s pointed in the right direction … nothing but positive things that can come of it.”