Page 52 - October 2019 FOP

Officers use fundamentals to help save gunshot victim
n BY DAN CAMPANA
Officers credited good training and canvassing techniques for the discovery of a woman struck by a bullet while inside her living room.
Working with Sergeant Rudy Vargas, Officers Rodolfo Farias and Michael Kocanda responded to a report of shots fired in the area of the 7300 block of South Wolcott in the early afternoon of Sept. 10. Officers located a wounded 21-year-old man, who was taken to an area hospital for treatment.
As part of the initial shooting investigation, Farias followed the man’s trail of blood, then inspected vehicles and homes that might have been struck by gunfire. At one house, where bushes partially obscured the structure, he took a closer look.
“That looks like a fresh bullet hole,” Farias, speaking at a press conference last month, recalled thinking. Farias alerted Vargas. The pair soon noticed something else.
“We hear like a thump, someone moaning,” Farias described. “I was able to look in, and it appeared to me to be someone ly- ing on the floor.”
Vargas and Farias forced their way into the home, where they found an unresponsive woman bleeding from a gunshot wound to the face. With Koncada helping to keep the area clear, Vargas called for medics.
He and Farias then focused on keeping the woman calm — even though they were unsure if she knew they were there — and comfortable. They placed a towel under her head and turned on a fan inside the small room, which was extremely hot.
Uncertain of the extent of her injuries, the men tried not to move the woman before EMS arrived. “We were consoling her,
[saying] help is on the way, everything is going to be fine,” Farias said.
The woman was quickly transported to the hospital, where she was initially listed in critical condition.
The officers said it was police fundamentals, not luck, that helped them locate the woman. Based on the direction of gun- fire, “We’re just looking at possibly where bullets wind up,” Kon- cada explained.
Walking into the room was startling to the officers. Kocanda said they didn’t know how long she might have been lying on the floor.
Vargas noted that the woman appeared to have been on her couch before being struck, with her phone just out of reach af- ter falling to the floor. The thumping sound might have been caused by the woman convulsing.
“I was shocked and upset at the same time,” Farias told re- porters. “It’s a traumatic scene. You think about your family. It could have been my wife, my kids.”
52 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ OCTOBER 2019