Eagle Scout and Virginia Tech
Posted in Current Events by John E. Pannell on April 23rd, 2007 at 4:44 am I saw this story last week, was going to post it here and forgot until this morning. In the midst of the carnage and madness at Virginia Tech an Eagle Scout was able to remain coolheaded enough to save his own life after being shot and seriously wounded.
FoxNews.com reported this story:
BLACKSBURG, Va. The image hinted at the horror that unfolded: a Virginia Tech student, sprawled and bloody, in the arms of others who struggled to carry him to safety.
The near-death ordeal of senior Kevin Sterne, captured in that photograph that played on newspaper front pages across the country, also reflects the resiliency and hope emerging from the nation’s deadliest campus shooting rampage.
Sterne was among the dozens of students shot in Norris Hall classrooms Monday…
…Doctors said Sterne is a former Eagle Scout who kept enough cool to fashion a tourniquet from an electrical cord after a bullet tore a inch-long gash through the femoral artery of his right leg.
“The patient that I took care of was an incredible guy,” said Dr. David Stoeckle, chief of surgery at Montgomery Regional Hospital. “He was bleeding significantly … he knew he was bleeding to death…”
As most anyone involved in the BSA knows, at least one detail of this story was incorrectly reported. The youn man is an Eagle Scout, not a “former Eagle Scout”.
A quick search on Google reveals several other news outlets in the US and Canada also carried this story. Even in the face of such a catastrophe, this is good publicity for the BSA.
At our Chinook District First Aid themed Camporee this past weekend, this story was passed around to all. I stressed to the Scouts that the chances of having to provide aid to yourself are hopefully very slim. I also told them all of the really important First Aid skills that I used in my 25 year career as a Firefighter?EMT I initially learned as a Scout.