After walking up to the bloody aftermath of a shooting in the New York subway, photojournalist Derek French tells CNN he stepped in and leveraged his Red Cross first aid training to help victims.
“Nobody was expecting it,” he told CNN. He had just stepped off the express N train after conductors said it was out of service.
Moving towards the front of the train, he noticed the platform getting significantly less crowded, but significantly more smokey.
Then, he saw a pool of blood, and victims nearby. At first, French said he thought they had been stabbed, but soon realized they’d been shot
He snapped a few photos, then said he put his camera bag down and went to help the four victims he remembered were laying on the ground — three nearby and a fourth behind him.
Approaching one of the victims, he started talking to him, trying to make sure he was okay.
French remembered finding that he had been shot in the ankle and was bleeding.
“I used my windbreaker to make an additional tourniquet as far up the limb as possible to slow it or ensure that another gunshot that I don’t see is restricted from blood flood,” he said.
He remembered talking to the man and the man, who he believed was still in shock, asking what happened to his ankle.
“What’s going on down there,” he remembered the man asking.
“You’ve been shot buddy,” someone nearby responded, French remembered.
French said that within minutes firefighters began to arrive, followed by police, and then medical personnel carrying stretchers.
When first responders arrived, French remembered asking them for tourniquets to apply in addition to the makeshift ones he and others had already applied.
Afterwards, as he climbed the stairs out of the bloody subway platforms, French said he was just shaken up.
“The walk just seemed like a long walk,” he said, saying he was trying to grasp what had just happened and the aid he just gave.
He saw more heavily armored and gunned police personnel as he exited the turnstiles, and the station.
“You get up there it felt like a breath of fresh air,” he said.
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