Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Heroes who brave trauma every shift
VIOLENT crime fills the Western Cape’s ambulances with gunshot wounds, stabbings and assaults. But often it’s the medics who are in the firing line.
They know they risk their lives to save others. In fact, sometimes the lives they save are the ones that put them at risk.
Medics Rushaana Gallow and Grant October have worked together since 2014. Both have been attacked many times, an Gallow has been shot in the arm.
The first time they were attacked together, they were responding to a call in Tafelsig from one of their “frequent flyers” – an older man with asthma. As they fetched a tank of oxygen from the ambulance, a group of men in masks struck.
“One guy placed a gun on the seat, and scratched through the bags,” Gallow said. “A few other guys came in the back with knives. They robbed us, they took everything. They left when the wife of the patient came out. She knew exactly who they were and gave us their names.”
But when police questioned her, she said she didn’t want to get involved out of fear of retaliation, because the men were gangsters.
“We just feel communities don’t have our backs. At the end of the day, we are going out there to help them,” Gallow said. “In certain areas I still get palpitations, especially Tafelsig.”
That night, after the attack, they just switched vehicles and carried on working. Months later, Gallow was helping a patient who had been shot in his buttocks. She gave him a samoosa and a koeksister because he was hungry and he said he felt bad that he’d robbed an ambulance earlier that year. He described the exact time and place of the incident, and Gallow realised her patient was one of the masked men who had attacked them in Tafelsig.
“We transported our own suspect,” she said. “He forgot what we looked like.”
She treated his wounds and took him to hospital.
Tafelsig first earned a reputation as a nightmare spot for Gallow in 2013. She was sitting on the passenger side of an EMS response bakkie when they got caught in crossfire between two gangs.
“The bullet came through the windscreen,” she said. “I ducked down, and it hit me in the arm. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve got me in the chest.”
Two days later, when her shift started again, she was back on the job.
“I enjoy what I do. After each and every incident, I come back,” she said. “We don’t tell our partners and families everything that goes on at work. It’s not a difficult job, you just need to want to be here.”
Two years after that, a brick was thrown through a passenger side window of the ambulance. October has also experienced armed robberies in Gugulethu and Nyanga.
“It definitely does change the way that you carry yourself, the way that you behave in stressful situations,” he said. “I do think I have a low grade of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) because of the attacks that happened to us in the past. It’s changed me.”
You’d think that being escorted by police would offer some protection, but with criminals hungry for guns, police presence creates even more of a target.
In one incident, his colleagues were called to a patient in Gugulethu, where they would have to get a SAPS escort. But it was a hoax call in order to ambush the police.
“They shot at police and one of the police officers died and one of the suspects also died. I ended up responding to the call, because we all heard our colleague over the radio and raced there,” October said.
“Funnily enough, I had to transport one of those suspects to Groote Schuur Hospital. That’s one of those moments when your ethics have to be really strong. It’s like, you did this to one of my colleagues; it could’ve been me and I’m still helping you out. That was a very emotionally challenging call.”
He has called for security guards to be stationed on every ambulance.
“It would solve all these problems, just get a private security company. Simple. They have armed guards to transport bread every morning. Bread. And they can’t do it for a government entity.”