By Bryn Stole
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — A 17-year-old Central High senior is in the hospital with a list of painful injuries — a pair of bullet wounds, a broken arm and a broken leg — after being shot and run over twice Sunday evening while trying to save a woman fatally shot on Essen Lane.
Daniel Wesley, a trained emergency medical responder who’s currently studying for his EMT certification, spotted 30-year-old April Peck lying in the roadway while driving home from a shopping trip at the Mall of Louisiana, said his mother, Kathy Wesley.
The son of a retired East Baton Rouge EMT, Wesley pulled to the side of the road, grabbed his father’s medic bag and rushed to the woman, who’d been shot and tossed from her car minutes earlier by her 48-year-old boyfriend, Terrell Walker.
Daniel Wesley pulled on a pair of gloves and was preparing to put pressure on the woman’s bullet wound when Walker came speeding back, aiming his car for Wesley and a group of other passers-by — including a physician and the crew of an EMS ambulance — who’d also stopped to help.
The impact threw Wesley against the ambulance, his mother said, shattering his arm. Then Walker stepped out of Peck’s Chevy Malibu and shot Wesley.
“If you help her, I’m going to kill you,” Kathy Wesley said Walker told her son as he turned to chase after the others trying to save Peck’s life.
Heroic, selfless effort by this incredible young man. Strong work Daniel Wesley. https://t.co/SfRMYhYCzY
— MONOC EMS (@MONOCEMS) November 29, 2016
Wesley managed to crawl away toward the Essen Lane median, his mother said, but when Walker returned he shot him again, then climbed in his car and ran over Wesley a second time as he attempted to escape.
The ordeal left Wesley, who was rushed along with Peck to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, with a shattered right arm, a broken thigh bone and a pair of gunshot wounds from bullets that passed straight through his body, his mother said.
Peck was pronounced dead not long afterward. Walker, the gunman, died later Sunday night in a shootout with East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies.
Wesley spent part of Sunday night in surgery to place rods and pins around his broken femur, Kathy Wesley said. A second surgery to repair his shattered arm is scheduled for Tuesday.
“He’s a tough kid. He’s silly and has a sense of humor you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “He’s cracking jokes and trying his best to keep the pain in. He’s been surrounded by friends and family all afternoon.”
Copyright 2016 The Advocate