By Carolyn P. Smith
Belleville News Democrat
Copyright 2008 Belleville News-Democrat
BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Twenty-year-old MedStar EMT Lydia Cravens had no time to think in the moments after her ambulance was ambushed Monday night and she took the wheel from her co-worker who was shot as they were transporting another gunshot victim to Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital.
“In a situation like that, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Cravens said. “Your thought process is not there. You don’t think. You sort of move.”
Cravens and her co-worker, Patrick Bierman, 23, responded about 9 p.m. to a call of a double shooting in the 1500 block of N. 51st Street in Washington Park. Another ambulance transported one of the two victims, who are brothers, and was followed by a detective. Cravens and Bierman transported the other but had no escort.
On Interstate 64 at the 25th Street Exit, a red Grand Am drove along side them and a suspect inside open fire, striking the ambulance seven times. Police believe the gunman was trying to finish off the gunshot victim in the ambulance, Washington Park Police chief Calvin Hammonds said. Police are searching for the car.
One bullet went through the mirror of the ambulance and struck Bierman in the arm and shoulder, and another went under his arm pit. Bierman was able to swerve around two cars on the highway and bring the ambulance to a stop, Cravens said.
“It was a normal scene when we arrived and left from Washington Park,” she said. “We did everything we were trained to do and had the patient in the ambulance. There was nothing crazy going on there.”
Cravens rode in the back of the ambulance with the patient and a relative of the patient.
“The next thing I heard was several gunshots, and debris started flying in the ambulance,” she said. “Pat stopped the ambulance. I yelled to Pat to see if he was OK. He yelled back, ‘I been shot! I been shot!” Cravens said. “I jumped out and went to the front of the ambulance. Pat moved over to the passenger side. He told me he couldn’t breathe,” she said.
After a quick check to make sure Pat and the patient were OK, “We just hauled it out of there,” Cravens said.
Cravens doesn’t see herself as a hero. She said she was operating on pure adrenaline and raw energy.
Bullets missed her by just feet. A radio just above her head that she uses to call the hospital was struck by a bullet and exploded. She said she watched a video and saw that a bullet could have landed under the cot where the patient was, or where her right leg was, or it could have struck her in the face, head or neck.
“It was God,” she said. “I was very blessed. We all were very blessed. So many things that should’ve been that weren’t. The assailant was not outside of the ambulance when I got out and ran around to the driver’s side. The bullets should’ve struck the engine but they didn’t. Pat could’ve wrecked the ambulance. We all could’ve been killed.... It was God.”
Craven plans to return to work for her shift Sunday. She praised the staff at Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital for the work the did when the ambulance finally arrived. Bierman, was later transported to St. Louis University Hospital, where he is recovering.
Asked whether she wants to see more security measures put in place to protect first-responders, Cravens said she certainly does. “It’s unfortunate that it takes something so extraordinary like this to awaken people to the reality of how dangerous it is out there,” she said.
Cravens said when her mother learned of the shooting, she was upset as any parent would be. Cravens said her mom, nor her dad, Assistant Cahokia Fire Chief Roger Lourwood tried to talk her out of returning to the job she loves.
“They told me to go back. I enjoying helping people who need help,” she said.