Doctors recall Va. Tech shooting ahead of 10th anniversary
33 people were killed on April 16, 2007, in worst mass shooting at the time
The Washington Post
The call came at 9:45 a.m. Shots fired at the Virginia Tech campus. Within minutes, Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Virginia, had initiated a code green — the message alerting surgeons, physicians and nurses to prepare the emergency department to respond to a disaster.
Less than 30 minutes later, the first victims from the worst mass shooting in history at that time would arrive. In all, 33 people were killed on April 16, 2007, after a gunman opened fire on the campus and then killed himself.
Seventeen others were wounded by gunfire in an academic building, including 11 treated at Montgomery Regional Hospital. All survived.
“It was a small little hospital in the middle of nowhere, and people pulled together,” said Demian Yakel, an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital that day. “Everyone rose to the occasion.”
David Stoeckle, who served as chief of surgery at Montgomery Regional at the time, said that despite numerous drills training for mass-casualty incidents, no one at the hospital was prepared for what transpired that spring morning.
“You don’t think it’s going to happen in your town,” said Holly Wheeling, who was working as an emergency physician on the day of the shooting. “You certainly don’t think it’s going to be you sitting in the ER.”
But the trauma experience resulted in lifesaving lessons that the physicians were able to pass on to peers and medical students.
The day began with two students from the West Ambler Johnston dorm being taken to Montgomery Regional just before 8 a.m. with grievous gunshot wounds. The first student, Ryan Clark, had been shot in the head and was dead on arrival. The second, Emily Hilscher, was intubated at Montgomery Regional and then sent on an Advanced Life Support ambulance to another hospital in Roanoke. She was pronounced dead when she arrived.
Dr. Wheeling said that the shooting appeared to be the result of a lover’s quarrel. Police for a brief time went looking for a person of interest in the slaying.
Soon she would learn that something much more horrific than a domestic dispute had occurred. She later wrote an essay in 2008 for The Post detailing the night terrors she faced in the months after.
“I kind of guess it’s something you don’t ever get over,” Dr. Wheeling said in an interview. “Those things stick with you.”
About two hours later, hospital officials learned that there had been a shooting at Norris Hall. Yakel had left for the day when he received a call telling him to return. He remembers snow flurries swirling in the cold air as he sped down the highway toward the hospital.
The first responders on campus had catalogued each victim with color-coded tags: yellow for serious, red for severe and black for nonviable.
“In a real disaster you take the people you can save first,” Dr. Stoeckle said. “You’ve got to save as many as possible.”
By the time the victims reached the hospital, Dr. Stoeckle was manning the entry, quickly calculating each patient’s immediate needs depending on the gravity of their wounds.
In the span off 11 minutes the gunman, Seung Hui Cho, had fired 174 rounds. Victims in four classrooms were hit multiple times. Cho had selected hollow-point bullets, designed to unfurl instantly like flower petals upon impact creating devastating internal wounds.
In all, Montgomery Regional treated 15 patients from Norris Hall, including 11 with gunshot wounds.
The last to arrive was Kevin Sterne, who was wounded so badly that paramedics had to resuscitate him on the floor of Norris Hall.
“He wasn’t responding,” Dr. Stoeckle said, noting that the first responders who initially saw Sterne “didn’t think he was going to make it.”
Mr. Sterne was sitting in a German class when he was shot through the leg. The bullet severed his femoral artery.
Dr. Stoeckle said that Sterne, an Eagle Scout, saved his own life with quick thinking. Mr. Sterne stuck a finger into his own leg to try to stop the bleeding before using the electrical cord from an overhead projector to create a tourniquet.
Mr. Sterne said that he remembers blacking out — “I was just kind of going to sleep,” he said — and the moment when he opened his eyes after being revived by paramedics at Norris Hall, he saw sunlight from the windows facing southeast.
A photograph of a bloodied Mr. Sterne carried in the arms of four police officers ran in newspapers across the country and came to embody the stunning violence visited to campus that day.
“That picture was only a glimpse of the carnage that went on in Norris Hall,” said Mr. Sterne’s mother, Suzanna Grimes. “They saw their professor and classmates get killed.”
At the hospital, Dr. Stoeckle and colleagues performed the surgery to repair Mr. Sterne’s femoral artery that saved his life and his leg from amputation.
“At any point he could have died,” Ms. Grimes said. “If it wasn’t for them he wouldn’t be there today.”
Heidi Miller was a freshman in a French class in Norris Hall when she was shot three times, twice in the thigh, and the third bullet went through her knee.
In the emergency department, Ms. Miller was treated by Dr. Yakel. She said she was soothed by his calming presence and the Virginia Tech Hokies surgical cap that he wore in her honor.
“I think my mom thought he was sent from heaven to be there that day,” Ms. Miller said. “Everything went really well because of him.”
Despite a six-inch scar over her knee, Ms. Miller said that she has full mobility. A bullet still lodged in her leg has left no lasting damage at all.
In July, she will take part in her first triathlon.