Trigger Warning

 I heard the shots first. Not to say I heard them first, as I was maybe five hundred feet, no more than 200 meters away when it happened.

As it happened, I was running in that direction.

June 19th was, if I recall, mostly cloudy with some moments of sun - it wasn't overly warm as I had worn my green EMS fleece over my black polyester "Wicked Muddy Mainer" tee - my last run over 5 miles had been in the rain and I was wearing a cotton tank, which chafed the hell out of my nipples and left me sore for a few days - so, cotton kills. Lesson learned. Not that I'm an amateur in anything but performance here, I've been running in various weather for years now, since 2018 or so really, but some lessons don't stick til you bleed. 

I live off Brown, and had worked a loop from Myrtle to Bridge, past what used to be the Jr High to East Bridge, past the retirement community and the horse-farm, out to 302 and up to Riverside St, back down Warren to Cumberland Ave. Here I had the thought to stay on Main and add another mile point five or so instead of zagging past the now mostly defunct SD Warren/Sappi paper mill to the top of Brown. Because a little more punishment is always good.

I was in the final stretch really, and had tied my fleece around my waist and balled up my t as well. I sweat a lot and today was no exception. Plus I'm a total primadonna and, again, today was no exception. It was normal in most ways. 

They sounded like fireworks. Now I am familiar with some firearms. The last time I shot was with Stu and it was a semi-automatic rifle which lit up the shit we were violating with rounds most effectively. That mighta been. Jesus. 2003? 2004? I don't even know off hand, it was a series of lifetimes ago. Anyhow. I'm familiar with the sounds they make. 

I'm more familiar with fireworks. Westbrook has it's share of bricks, mortars, roman candles, bottle-rockets, up to quarter and half-sticks which seem to be relentless for the doggos, and annually they cower around the 4th as for them it feels like war.

That's what I thought it was. Fireworks. I remember thinking "some douchebag is tossing down quarter-sticks and it's not even the 4th!" - Follow me for more old man thoughts, yeah? These come unwanted to the front of my brain like helium-filled Mylar bubble-letters, which I must identify and address before disregarding as absurd - on to the next offense. Fuck it takes a lot of work to stay this irritated.

I guess I was in a straight line behind the Middle Eastern Market from the incident. 

Time gets wonky for the adrenaline, but what I remember was that there were multiple shots - clustered too, like a string of firecrackers that went off and went off again after a hiccup in the powder-dispersal on the wick. I definitely heard a woman...yell? Scream? Moan? It was a woman making the sound I heard followed by what sounded like a man's voice - this might have been between the rounds of gunfire or immediately afterward, like I said it's hazy.

I was running on the boardwalk, which is weathered wooden planks, and when I rounded the market, I felt something was off - there was a police vehicle parked nearby, maybe it was in front of Frog and Turtle - and a cop running with his weapon out (that's a first for me in my hometown) I believe he was headed across Bridge towards the makeshift lot beside the Armory - that's when I saw her body.

I think it was a VW Tourag - mighta been a Rav-4, coulda been a CRV. Was blue. Looked brand-new. There were folks in it, a guy looking at his lap in the drivers seat and two - no three faces yelling at me from the back seat. They were yelling "Call 911" - I looked up and saw the cop, saw another vehicle with blues on parking in a hurry on Bridge and thought that 911 had been alerted - and there was a woman lying there on top of what I could have sworn as a red scarf - strange weather for a scarf.

I did take out my phone and I called 911 - at the same time another passer-by was asking me what he could do to help and I think I might have suggested getting the kids out of the car but it was more likely his suggestion as I know I was scrambled and not thinking clearly - 911 confirmed I was at the scene they had already been notified of, parking lot behind Portland Pie, confirmed, and asked what I saw - I told them there was a woman down on the ground in a pool of blood, and I couldn't tell where she was bleeding from but it was a gsw - at this point my tertiary horror came full view as I saw the other guy getting the kids out of the car - He thought to tell them to look away - God Bless that dude. And his parents - and I realized that the guy sitting in the drivers seat was also shot, non-responsive, and likely bleeding out.

911 was telling me to apply pressure to the wound, I had my shirt and fleece all balled up and wedged against this woman's ribcage, hopeful this was making some difference. She was wearing a black shirt and the entire thing was soaked in blood, from the pooling, I assumed it was on the left side of her torso, in retrospect I shouldn't have been afraid to take that shirt off of her.

I told 911 that I couldn't see the wound, but I thought I had it.

Her eyes never focused. Not once. When I knelt down beside her I told her "I'm Adam - I'm gonna try to help you" and that got nothing. She gurgled once or twice but there was no aspiration. I was telling her to fight. Telling her her kids needed her to stay. Begging her to stay.

Nothing.

Her skin had gone a waxy yellowish gray - the whites of her eyes seemed to be different too. Gray. 

There were cops there at this point, and I was hopeful for EMTs but nothing yet - I told 911 there were police on the scene (hadn't there already been police on the scene?) and they ended the call.

It felt like an eternity before the cop came over and took over for me, he was looking after the woman on the ground and his partner was looking after the kids but nobody had seen the guy in the driver's seat - "Hey you've got a second victim here" got their attention and the partner asked my help pulling him out of the car - he came like a wet sack of flour but we got him to the ground with minimal impact, not that it would matter. 

He was bleeding from his neck and I had seen a gouge on the back of his neck and across the meat of his shoulder as well, but this wasn't bleeding. The geyser had been from his throat where it looked like he had been shot in the jugular - the officer was applying pressure to his neck after whipping his shirt off in the transfer to the ground. I'm glad she did that as I don't think I could have- what she asked me to do was start compressions, which I did, taking the time to lace my stupid fingers before finding the edge of his sternum and cranking out to rhythm. 

The blood was spurting from his neck in cadence with the thrusts. 

He was non-responsive as well. I couldn't tell if his navel was filled with blood or if he had also been shot in the belly. 

It might have been 30 seconds or 3 minutes of compressions - surely wasn't any longer than that - but I was eventually relieved by someone in more authority which was a... relief.

I sat there and watched those two folks bleed out in front of their kids.

I had his blood all over me. Like to my shoulders. Her blood soaked my shirt and fleece, shorts a bit too. It was all I could smell for a day. 

Got under my watch-band, my fingernails. 

There's a scene from Saving Private Ryan where Giovanni Ribisi's character, a medic, is mortally wounded and they realize that they can't save him, and he asks for some morphine while his blood is pouring out in sheets - that keeps coming back to me for some reason.

There was nothing I could have done - which is a small blessing as what I was capable of was basically nothing between adrenaline and lack of experience. I want this to be about me and my shortcomings, that's a flaw, I'm aware of it thanks. 

It's really about those kids. I guessed between 4 and 9 and I guess the paper says 7 and 11 - so I was lowballing but I wasn't close to them. I don't know what they saw. I can assume everything.

My experience leads me to understand that they will likely never outgrow this trauma and I pray they can process through it some day, and that they have supports now to help with this incredible loss.

As I sit here typing this, my phone dinged and as it turns out, their grandparents are on the way from Texas to retrieve them. 

Not that anything will give them their parents back.