BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. — The day after the Parkland high school mass shooting, Broward County Medical Director Dr. Peter Antevy said his kids woke up for school, heard what happened and his son looked at him with the “fear of God that he had to go to school that day.”
“My first instinct was he needs a bleeding kit. My son, today, has a bleeding kit on his person,” Antevy told CBS News’ Scott Pelley during a segment on “60 Minutes” this past weekend.
The segment takes a deep look into the difference between wounds sustained from a handgun and injuries from an AR-15 style rifle round. Pelley spoke with Don Deyo, a former paramedic and Green Beret with firsthand experience with battlefield wounds.
CBS News reported that AR-15s have been the weapon of choice in some of the worst mass shootings in the history of the United States, such as the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, earlier this year.
Antevy and paramedic Laz Ojeda sat down with Pelley to explain how emergency medical response has changed in light of the wounds inflicted by a weapon like an AR-15.
Ojeda said part of the reason he was able to save student Maddy Wilford after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was because Broward County EMS had recently equipped itself with the proper tools to treat “battlefield” wounds.
“We carry active-killer kits in our rescues,” Ojeda said. “That is a kit that has five tourniquets, five decompression needles, five hemostatic agents, five emergency trauma dressings.”
Antevy said today’s wounds demand a new kind of training.
“Everything we do is based on what the military has taught us,” he said. “We never used to carry tourniquets. We never used to carry chest seals.”
He said everything changed for EMS after the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting that killed 26.
Antevy said as mass casualty events become more common, it highlights the importance of civilian training, such as “Stop the Bleed.” Over the last three years, nearly 30,000 classes have been conducted for civilians"We have to have the general public understand that they are the first line of defense,” Antevy says. “And every city, every community in this country needs to roll out those bleeding kits, or these active killer kits… And every child has to learn how to do it.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated and modified.