By Noah Goldberg and Larry Mcshane
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A Queens EMT, testifying about the gruesome scene of a samurai sword attack, recalled a floor soaked red with the victim’s blood — and the white of an exposed bone in the man’s left arm.
FDNY first responder Ryan Walsh, called as a witness Wednesday in the first-degree assault trial of Karla Barba, offered a graphic description of the scene inside the building where the gory attack occurred in June 2016.
“The floor was covered in blood,” said Walsh. “The patient was wearing, I believe, just boxers at the time … He was laying prone on the ground, with lacerations on his body.”
Walsh recalled how he was forced to apply a tourniquet for the first and only time in his 10-year career after victim Franklin Larrea, 42, bled through bandages wrapped around the wounds on his forearm and wrist.
As the blood continued to seep from the victim, the EMTs even applied a second tourniquet to the horrific wounds.
“It was pretty deep to the point where there was white showing,” Walsh told the jury. “… The patient was unresponsive to voice.”
Walsh recalled how Larrea’s blood pressure dropped to a dangerously low level, and how the victim was both sweating profusely yet “cool and pale” to the touch. Larrea was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, and recovered from his injuries.
Barba, 39, swung the samurai sword at the father of their 1-year-old child during an argument inside their Queens home.
The prosecution portrayed Barba as out of control when she grabbed the sword from a bedroom and started hacking at her lover. The defense claims the whole thing was an accident, with Barba unaware that the sword’s scabbard fell off the blade as she swung the weapon at him.
Back in December 2008, she was infamously attacked by her then-fiance Hiram Monserrate — a City Council member who gashed Barba’s face with a glass, inflicting injuries that required 40 stitches.
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