Minnesota Shooting: Students, Staff and Medical Workers Describe Acts of Heroism

The horrific violence of Wednesday’s attack on a Minneapolis Catholic school was met with acts of courage and heroism, big and small.

Officials from the county medical center, where some victims were still receiving treatment on Thursday, described selfless acts they saw from medical workers, police officers, students and staff at the school.

Here are some of those moments.

A student shielded another with his body.

Martin Scheerer, chief of emergency medical services for Hennepin County, said he was told stories of students protecting each other. He said he had heard of one child who covered another with his own body when the shooting began and took a shotgun blast to his back.

He also praised teachers who brought students to a safe area outside the church and tried to keep them calm.

“There’s a lot of unrecognized heroes in this event,” Mr. Scheerer said.

A nurse put herself at risk to hold a child’s hand.

Dr. John Gaykin, a trauma surgeon at Hennepin County Medical Center, which was still treating nine gunshot victims on Thursday, said he saw a nurse abandon safety precautions to comfort a child.

He said a nurse from another unit at the hospital saw a child, scared and alone, about to go into a CT scan. Normally, medical staff members are told to evacuate the room because of radiation risk, but the nurse went into the scan with the child, took the child’s hand and held back her hair, Dr. Gaykin said.

“Those are the types of things we witnessed yesterday,” Dr. Gaykin said. “Everybody in this hospital, in this organization, was there, down to the EMS, the housekeepers, the nurses that weren’t even part of it.”

Emergency workers stopped victims’ bleeding on the scene.

Quick work by the first police officers to arrive on the scene could have saved lives.

Patient care began one or two minutes after the police secured the scene, before victims were transported to hospitals, said Dr. Aaron Robinson, the assistant medical director at Hennepin County Medical Center’s emergency medical services.

He said police officers worked quickly to apply tourniquets to stop the bleeding, which made a “key difference.”

“They’re not going to survive if they continue bleeding for a few minutes,” he said.

Church staff members quickly sheltered students.

As soon as bullets shattered the church windows, staff members acted within seconds to move children under pews, an action that saved lives, according to the authorities and witnesses.

Ellie Mertens, the church’s youth minister, said in an interview on Wednesday that Matthew D. DeBoer, the school principal, and other staff members had an “instinctual” reaction to the sound of gunfire and “instructed everyone to get down.” Mr. DeBoer said in a statement that faculty and students moved “within seconds” to shield one another, especially the youngest of the children.

“Our teachers were heroes,” Mr. DeBoer said. “Children were ducked down, adults were protecting children — older children were protecting younger children.”

Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.