6.Michael Sullivan — Direct

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Okay. Michael Sullivan, M-i-c-h-a-e-l, S-u-l-l-i-v-a-n.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I'm currently a paramedic employed by the Public Health Commission for the City of Boston.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Thirty-one years.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I first got hired as an EMT and emergency medical technician and then was promoted to paramedic in 1987.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: First, you need to take a -- you have to be an EMT, which is generally a 100- or 110-hour course. After you take that, you're certified as an EMT. Then you can take the paramedic program, which is generally a 2000-hour course. It was when I took it. The clinical, didactic, and then a field internship. Then you get to take the national registry test and get certified as a paramedic.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: In 1987.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: You have to recertify every two years.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: The Boston deploys a two-tier response system staffed by basic life support ambulances, which is the majority of the ambulances, and advanced life support ambulances, which are staffed by paramedics.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I do.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: No. It's staffed by two paramedics.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, it depends. Days and evenings, it's generally -- depending on staffing but generally 20 basic life support ambulances and five advance life support ambulances, days and evenings. And at night, the staffing drops to 15 basic life support ambulances and three advance life support ambulances.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: There is.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I was working the midnight -- the night shift or the midnight shift. My shift was 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Correct.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I was, yes.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We came in at 11:00. We did our normal shift change. And we did our normal drug count, the things we normally do. And then our operations center, which is known as The Turret, sent us to a person in the water behind the aquarium. So we responded to that. And when we got there, there was one of our BLS ambulances already there, and the fire department responded and the police -- Harbor Patrol responded. So we went down and assisted them. Someone had already taken them out of the water, and we assisted them bringing the patient up to the street.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: No, no. We didn't have another call after that. While we were on the way there, the police office had advised us that there was a shooting in Cambridge of a police officer and that they had went to the Mass. General. So we headed over to the Mass. General to see what was happening over there.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We were. Shortly after we left the Mass. General, we were dispatched to an unconscious subject in East Boston, and we left the Mass. General and headed towards East Boston.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We got canceled from that call, and we proceeded to the Frontage Road, which is a fueling area. That's where we fueled up our truck. And we got a call from there to the airport for an unconscious person.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We did. We responded to Terminal A at the airport. And on the way there, we had -- one of our shift commanders had fallen in behind us. He took a different route, but we ended up arriving at the same time.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: At the airport, Terminal A.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: On the way to the airport, we had the scanner in the ambulance on. And they had said that there was a carjacking in Brighton, and they were in the Cambridge/Brighton area. And they had updated that it was in -- it happened in Brighton. So the Boston Police sent their available units in Brighton to the Brighton/Watertown line.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, that particular part of the city falls in our district. That's part of our response area. So when the police responded there, we started in that direction so that we would be closer to the area if something should happen or if they would need us.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: No. On the way to the -- on the way to Brighton on the Mass. Pike, we had a breakdown with our vehicle, and we had to coast to the -- after the tollbooths, coast to the bottom of the ramp. And the shift commander that was behind us, he pulled up to us and -- you know, What happened? The truck broke down so we need to go with you. We ended up jumping in the supervisor vehicle, and then we proceeded out to -- out Western Avenue towards the Brighton/Watertown line.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We did. Along the way, as events there had unfolded and the police activity had increased, our operations center sent us directly to Dexter Street in Watertown.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We didn't get completely to the incident location. We got to Dexter, near Arsenal Street. Right in that general area, we ended up stopping there and getting out of the vehicle.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We stopped there -- that was the beginning of Dexter, but we didn't know where our other unit was. We were going to meet up with the BLS truck, or the basic life support truck, but we didn't know where they were. We were on the radio. Can you tell us where you are? Can you tell us where you are? We were kind of hovering around that area. Shortly after that they came around Dexter Street towards us.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: That was the District 14 ambulance, A14.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: It is.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: They were coming out of the street, so we made notice that we were there to intercept with them. And they stopped, and we opened up the back doors of the truck and got into the ambulance.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I entered through the back door, and my partner entered through the side door.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: One got out and the other stayed inside.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: There were. There were two Boston police officers in the vehicle, too.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: That was Sean Murphy.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yeah. We generally will get in the truck, and generally who was at the head of the patient will be the one that will kind of, like, run the call and document the call. It's, like, your call. I had got in the back and started my evaluation from that part of the patient. And he got in the side door and started the evaluation from the head down to the waist.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yeah. That's what we actually did. The person at the head would do from the head to the waist, and the person from the feet would do from the feet to the waist. And we'd do an exam that way.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Somewhere along the line in the back of the ambulance, we ended up swapping positions. I was at the head and Sean was at the feet.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: When I first got in the truck, I noticed that he had multiple trauma, and he had some -- and road rash. And we asked the police, you know, What -- What happened? And they said, Well, you know, he was the suspect, and these are the injuries that he has.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yeah. They initially -- when I asked about the road rash, they said, No, no, no. It was a blast-type injury from an errant explosive device.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: He had some other penetrating trauma. Some looked like they were apparent gunshot wounds, and others looked like shrapnel-type-appearing wounds.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, all we knew is that he was the suspect. We didn't have a name.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Right. On the way, we received that information.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yeah. The first thing we'll try to do is the general appearance of the patient, and then we'll try to establish a level of consciousness. He was pale. He was sweaty. And he was looking at us -- we were making eye contact, so we knew he was awake. But the skin condition and the mechanism of injury from the trauma that he had, we suspected that he was in shock.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: He was, yes.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: No. The police department had -- he was in custody and that's their policy, is to -- he had to remain in handcuffs.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, the first thing we did was try to treat him. So I initially -- where do you hurt? Do you have trouble breathing? But I had no -- he didn't answer us. So -- but we knew we had to start treating him. And the first line of treatment would be an I.V. So we wanted to get an I.V. and we could treat his shock with the fluids. We could also, if we needed to, sedate him to put a tube in his lungs and resuscitate him.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, during our exam, it was when everybody was hands on, he got -- he got combative, and he was resisting our attempts to intervene and treat him. For some reason, the stretcher that he was on would normally have a chest strap across his chest. For some reason that was lower. It was around his waist. So when we attempted to intervene and treat him, he would lift himself up off the stretcher and yell and scream and try to resist us touching him to try to treat him. When Sean tried to prep his legs -- we couldn't get I.V. in his arms because he was handcuffed. So when we tried to prep his legs for intraosseous -- intravenous line, just that attempt, he would get resistive -- resisted the treatment and would squirm around and try to get away from what we were attempting to do. And multiple times he'd pull up off the stretcher and --

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: He was yelling loud, you know, like a "ghurrr" type of attempt when he stood up to -- it seemed like he was trying to get out of the seatbelts that were holding him on and resisting our attempts to treat him.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yes.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yes.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Well, that and his -- the injuries that he had and he being in shock, you would get anxious from that, and, you know, that's a typical response to hypoxia or shock.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We started towards the Beth Israel. That was the nearest trauma center.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yes.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We tried -- yeah, we tried to bandage his head wound. He had an abdominal wound which was an evisceration. It's a penetrating injury to the abdomen where the intestines come out of your abdomen. So we tried to dress that. But every time we tried hands on, he resisted the treatment.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I believe it was five minutes, six minutes, around that line.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: No, no. We could do -- we could try to keep him flat so that he wouldn't sit up and drop his blood pressure further. I think we put the bed in Trendelenburg to do basic type treatments for the shock, but he would not allow us to treat him any further than that.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Yeah. We notified the Beth Israel that we were coming in, so they were waiting for us. We got out of the truck and brought him straight into the trauma room.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Thank you.