Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Gunshots, Ambulances, and Crime Scenes

Hey guys

I know I should (pfft. Darn useless science degree) know some of this stuff, but I need a little help here. <g>

In the case of a non-fatal gunshot wound (say, in the thigh or shoulder), what would the ambulance officers do on the way to the hospital? Also, would the fact that it's a non-super powered Kryptonian play a role in the surgery? Obviously, no blood transfusion, but... how might his different physiology affect things?

Also, where would be a good place to shoot a normal person? In the stomach? What would happen if you shot someone in the stomach? What kind of surgery would that involve? How long, roughly, would it take?

And, if the police were involved, what kind of procedures would they follow? What would they do at the scene of the incident? Would they need statements or would they make arrests off the bat?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave

I thankfully don't have any practical experience with this, but to the best of my knowledge (someone please correct me if I'm wrong):

"What would the ambulance officers do on the way to the hospital?"

Bandage the wound to stem the bloodflow. Possibly put on a tourniquet if necessary. Probably cleanse the wound first, depending on the exact circumstances.

Start an IV line (this is SOP for just about any EMT pickup).

Monitor vital signs.

Other things (oxygen line, etc) as necessary.

"Would the fact that it's a non-super powered Kryptonian play a role in the surgery?"

Up to you. We know very little of Kryptonian physiology for certain. The difference between a human and a non-powered Kryptonian might not be noticable at all on a larger-than-microscopic view, or there might be an almost entirely different organ structure or maybe some membranes and stuff that no one's ever seen before. Whatever suits your purposes.

"Also, where would be a good place to shoot a normal person?"

In my experience, there isn't one. No matter where you hit, you're bound to cause some physical harm...

(That's the smart-alec way of saying "What do you mean by 'good'? What do you want to do?")

"What would happen if you shot someone in the stomach?"

Well, there are other things the bullet could/would hit. There'd be internal bleeding which would need to be patched up. Stomach acid might or might not seep out, causing damage to nearby organs without the proper lining. The bullet might or might not hit a major blood vessel, causing much faster bleeding. The bullet might or might not hit the spine or a major nerve, causing partial paralysis. The bullet might or might not hit another organ on the way out (depending on angles and stuff). The bullet might or might not become lodged in a rib, which might or might not necessitate surgery to remove it (sometimes, they decide that doing so would be more trouble than its worth).

The specifics are, basically, up to you.

Surgery would require stitching up the wound and investigating for further damage. The specifics would depend on the specifics of the damage. Timing would vary depending on what needs to be done, but would most likely be measured in hours.

"And, if the police were involved, what kind of procedures would they follow?"

A regular CSI watcher could probably answer this much better, but off the top of my head:

Seal off the area.

Question any witnesses.

Call in a CSI team.

Let them gather evidence (take samples of blood, look for the bullet, take photographs of the scene, etc).

If there's a guy with a smoking gun and a dozen witnesses pointing to him and saying, "He did it!" take him in for questioning. You don't want to make an arrest on the spot because false arrest is a troublesome charge. OTOH, you can hold someone for 24 hours without consequences. So, you take the guy into custody, get his story down on paper, whatever. Then you build up a case and arrest him when you're sure.

This is all "best guess" stuff, of course, but hopefully, most of it's accurate. It should get you started, at least, until someone with more specific knowledge comes in.

Paul

one thing that pops to mind to add would be that in the ambulance, they'd get the person on a heart monitor. (basically, little stickies stuck to the chest, with lines running to a piece of equipment that shows how the heart is doing. it goes into more specifics than merely listening with a stethoscope). there would also be possibly contact with a hospital en route. maybe the ambulance service is connected to a hospital (example, St. Lawrence Bay Hospital Ambulance or some such) or it might be an independent service (around in my area, Gold Cross Ambulance, for example).

the trauma bay would want to know things like what's the pulse like, any evisceration (internal organs poking out through the wound, but not sure how likely this would be on a gunshot wound), blood pressure, and oxygen saturation would be key (how much oxygen there is circulating in the blood. one paramedic told me once that when it drops below 85, go coffin shopping, but at the medical center where I do transcription, I've typed O2 sats down in the 70s and 60s on the people with lung problems).

I once wrote a medical scene that had someone with a large abdominal laceration taken to a hospital in an ambulance, and I wrote it from the paramedics' point of view. I got on the internet and asked on a bulletin board if someone would like to help me with writing the details. What you might wanna do is start with that, the "basic human information", and then give it a kryptonian tweak.

overall, i'd be scared to shoot someone in the stomach. as paul said, the likelihood of nicking the spinal cord, a major blood vessel, etc. is quite high. And even the shoulder can be touchy---get a bit too far down on someone with slighly asymetrical internal organs, and you could nick the aorta. then they'd be dead! go for the thigh, I say. If it was real life, and someone was coming at me with a knife, i'd shoot em in the thigh---big meaty area, cause lots of pain, disable a major limb of the body, but not kill. also possibly break the femur, or even aim for the pelvis and clip a bit of that off.

golly, I'm gruesome.....

David, Nan's a wonderful source of expertise in this field. I remember I asked a similar question - assuming by 'where's a good place', you mean somewhere that isn't likely to be life-threatening or permanently disabling - and was told the shoulder. You can still do a lot of damage, and run the risk of permanent paralysis, but it's less risky than other sites.

A shot to the stomach would be extremely dangerous, I think. If you want long surgery, risk of death, and an extremely long recovery, then that's the place to head for.

Forgot Jill - also a good source of medical expertise.

Yvonne

isn't pam J a good one too? I'm just remembering one I read of hers that was medical---"Lifeline", I think it was called. Right? is that her brain or did she get help from others?

I've done a little study into forensic chemistry, I don't remember specifics but apart from matching bullet fragments to guns they also leave residue which is specific to guns.

I hope this helps, I can't find my forensic notes at the moment, but if I do, I'll post further.

Thanks for the thought, but I'm not a good medical person -- Lifeflight was written by Raconteur.

PJ

When serving an arrest/search warrant, the task force officers and other people who are allowed to carry a gun will go up to the front door and line up along it, as well as sending a few people to the back and other exits. Sometimes they will enter by force immediately with a small ram (if the warrant is classified as no-announce), other times they will knock first to see if anyone will let them in. They then proceed to enter the site and secure each room, canvasing it for hostile individuals and or loose weaponry or other things that could be a danger (ie, a gun in a desk). Depending on the task force, they may keep individuals in handcuffs or not, whether the arrest warrant was for them or not (in order to keep the scene 'safe'). After they figure out who all they have, they may take individuals they have warrants for offsite to process arrests, or keep them onsite for interviews and then take them to processing.

After the whole site has been secured, a photographer will go through and photograph the whole site as it was found. Then they call in specialist crews to analyze what's on the site. This is when the search begins and things start to get moved. I have yet to see fingerprint crews being used on-site, and a lot of times, gloves aren't even used, though I assume that's probably more dependant on the crime that has been committed. A murder, I would guess they would be more careful about prints.

While the crews are going through and taking what they need, agents do interviews with the people they found onsite. These interviews generally try to discern who these people are, what relationships they have to the subject of the investigation, and generally pick for information regarding the subject. After an interview has been completed, if the person is not needed to identify things on-site, help the specialist crews, or is not included in an arrest warrant, they are generally allowed to go home.

Once everything that the search crews want to keep has been rounded up, tagged, and boxed, an inventory list is created and given to the site owner or left at the site so that they know exactly what was taken. Usually, unless the specific goal is to shut the business down, agents will try to avoid taking things that may shut a business down -- for instance forensic copies of computer data are made if at all possible instead of seizing the whole computer.

This is, at least, my first-hand experience with government agencies. I have no idea what local police would do.

I'm not gonna be useful for the police/criminal side of this, but I can certainly help out a bit on the medical side - having been in the ER for several gunshot wounds (well, not me myself personally being shot, but treating patients and stuff).

So, EMS's main job is to stabilize the patient in the field - and keep him stable on the way to the hospital. They'd be mainly concerned with staunching the blood flow from the wound - so lots of pressure to the injury site. They don't usually use tourniquets anymore - we don't like them in the ED. They cause too much of their own tissue damage.
Then, like a lot of other people said, monitoring the patient - pulse, respiratory rate, heart monitor, oxygen saturation. The ABCs of resuscitation are airway, breathing and circulation - if the patient is awake and talking to you - not so many worries about the first 2, but if they're bleeding, obviously gonna worry about circulation. If they're unconcious, and we don't know what other injuries they may have, they automatically get a C-spine collar and placed on a back-board. The ambulance guys will be calling ahead to the hospital to let the trauma team know what's coming in and the extent of injuries. They're also gonna want to keep track of the amount of blood loss (as much as they can).
IV will definitely be started - that's the first thing we learned on our trauma surgery rotation - 2 large bore IVs, 2 Liters of Normal Saline - STAT. <g>

Surgery's gonna depend on where they are shot and the extent of damage. Having never dealt with a non-human patient (<g>), I can't speak from firsthand experience. But abdominal wounds are gonna get exploratory surgery no matter what. If it's an extremity (arm or leg) wound, it'll depend - a straight through shot with no evidence of hitting the bone or EXCESSIVE bleeding is just gonna get stitched up and watched (although sometimes not even stitched - higher risk of infection).
I don't know how much difference Kryptonian physiology will make - unless we're dealing with organ damamge - probably going to have things in different places. May bleed differently, etc... And definitely no transfusions, which could be really bad with a gun shot wound if he's bleeding. He'll definitely need a lot of other fluid resuscitation then - IV fluids (normal saline, lactated ringers, etc.)

No real good place to be shot, obviously. If you mean good, as in not gonna cause all that much damage, then arm/shoulder or leg. Nice big chunky area with muscles and easy to clamp-off blood vessels. It'll be a little trickier if it hits a MAJOR blood vessel or bone, but still better than chest or belly.
Stomach is generally NOT a good place to get shot. There are way too many organs and blood vessels that can be damaged. Even a straight through shot gets emergency exploratory surgery because we don't know what else might have been hit. There are good odds that the bowel will be damaged with a gunshot wound - and depending on the extent of the damage, at least some of the bowel will need to be removed - so pretty decent surgery. Liver injuries are BAD - they bleed like stink! Spleen also bleeds like stink but you can remove that if you need to. Liver you have to try to keep - we need that.
A simple exploratory surgery (for the belly), with no internal damage will probably take 1-2 hours, depending on anesthesia, etc. IF there is damage, it will take LONGER - bowel resection 2-4 hours, depending on how much they have to take out. Liver/pancreas/kidney/other solid organs - again will depend on damage, but probably a decent amount longer 3-8 hours.

That was a long post, I could have gone longer. Let me know if you need any other specifics.

Jill

Oh, one thing I guess I should add that applies for any crime-scene situation. The primary objective is to keep everyone safe. This means keeping *everyone* they find at the scene under wraps until it is known precisely why they are there and if they pose a threat. This means, realistically, that even a mild-mannered secretary or a witness might end up in handcuffs for a while.

I've only got 5 minutes before I need to run, so I'll be back later, but - wow, guys. Thanks!

You've really outdone yourselves. I'll be sure to ask if there are any specifics I need once I sit down and work everything out. (They should make 'Ask a FoLC' one of the lifelines on Who Wants to be a Millionare. <g>)

Thanks again,

Dave

FoLCs know everything. It's a given law of nature.

LabRat

I realise we don't really need this since we already have Jill and Nan

Don't go with a shoulder wound too casually; they can be very nasty. If they shatter enough bones or damage enough nerves it may be necessary to amputate the arm, as happened to my uncle during WW2, and if enough of the shoulder is destroyed you can't use a prosthetic arm. Short of that, any really serious bone injury to the shoulder requires surgery and a lengthy period in cast that immobilises the shoulder and a chunk of arm - not quite as bad as a spinal injury, but close.

I pointed that out years ago. The shoulder is full of blood vessels, and a complicated network of nerves. A shoulder wound, contrary to the way the tv shows portray it, can be, and often is, permanently disabling.

Doc Jill is probably your best reference here. If I were going for a "good" place (ie, one that can be expected to do relatively minor damage) I'd probably go for the arm. Bear in mind, however, that there really is no "good" place to get shot. Just spots less likely to be permanently disabling than others.

As for the police side of it, I'm no more help than Jill. Any FoLCs care to comment?

Nan

PS: I *did* have Ralph get shot in the butt in one story. I gave him a limp in cold or damp weather from there on.

Okay I found my particular notes on it and this is what is involved in firing a bullet.

When a bullet is fired, the propellent explodes and the bullet is forced through the barrel which is what will make the bullet spin keeping the trajectory stable. However, the barrel is smaller than the bullet itself and so as it passes through the barrel it produces distinctive groves on the bullet itself which is characteristic to particular guns. Fragments of the bullet such as the lead casing aroun it are also expelled along with some of the gunpowder residue. Gunpowder residue is important as it it establishes the following things:

- Whether the death was by suicide (in the case of death)
- Who fired the gun
- Matching the bullet fragments to a particular bullet
-Whether the several bullets fired are from the same gun or a box of bullets and
-Which bullet came from which gun

To do this you need to do a chemical analysis (usually a chemical assay) into the elements that make up the gunpowder residue and the casing fragments. Gunpowder is generally made of nitrates, an explosive of (again generally) a lead compound and a primer fuel of antimony sulphide.

A metal jacket around the bullet also helps identify which gun the bullet came from. These are usually compositions of copper and zinc with copper being the main component.

That's all the notes had. I'm not sure if you will understand it but this is generally what happens. Well at least the forensics behind it.