VIENNA, Ga. — The heroes of Sunday’s mass shooting response weren’t just deputies and paramedics. They were also the seven medical workers on duty at a small rural hospital when dozens of victims suddenly began arriving.
New details from Crisp Regional Hospital reveal how a tiny emergency room staff responded after the deadly shooting at a Dooly County homecoming block party that left two people dead and dozens injured.
Just after 2 a.m. Sunday, the hospital got word that gunshot victims were on the way from Vienna, about nine miles away.
What they didn’t know was how many patients were coming.
“No, we did not have an idea of how many there would be. We did not have an idea how many we would end the morning by receiving and treating,” said April Dukes, Chief Nursing Officer.
At the time, only seven people were working in the emergency room: five nurses, one doctor and one nurse practitioner.
“I had one doc caring for them until the rest of the cavalry could get there,” Jason Troup, clinical coordinator for the emergency room.
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As victims poured into the 76-bed hospital, staff immediately began triaging patients, deciding who needed emergency surgery, who could wait and who needed transfer to a Level 1 trauma center in Macon.
In all, Crisp Regional treated 26 victims from the shooting.
Hospital leaders said 18 had gunshot wounds. Others were injured while trying to escape the chaos, including people struck by vehicles.
“They trained for it and they did what was needed to be done until help could arrive, and they held it together,” Troup said.
As news of the tragedy spread, doctors, nurses and support staff rushed in from home.
Surgeon Dr. Vincent Culpepper said even after reinforcements arrived, the emergency response team only grew to about 30 people.
“People who came out here to help that weren’t on call had no idea that this was going to happen,” Culpepper said. “They got a call at two o’clock in the morning and showed up. And if they hadn’t, it would have been a whole different story.”
To put the response into perspective, Culpepper said the hospital typically treats only two or three gunshot patients in an entire month.
On Sunday morning, staff treated 18 gunshot victims within about an hour.
Hospital leaders credit intensive trauma training and teamwork for helping them manage one of the largest mass-casualty incidents the facility has ever faced.