After working a security detail for President Barack Obama, Massachusetts State Trooper Chris Dumont arrived in Watertown in search of a black Mercedes SUV and the two carjacking suspects who had reportedly stolen the vehicle.
It was the wee hours of April 19, 2013—and things were about to get chaotic. As was later discovered, the two suspects were Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
A shootout ensued.
Tamerlan was killed, Dzhokhar fled, and Richard Donohue, a transit officer with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, was shot in the right thigh and began bleeding profusely.
One officer administered first aid, another applied pressure to his wound. Dumont, a certified paramedic and homicide investigator for the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, grabbed his medical bag from his cruiser. “By the time I arrived at Richard’s location,” says Dumont, CJ’00, “his heart had already stopped and I became focused on transporting him to the hospital.”
Donohue lost 90 percent of his blood—but he survived. He required more than 40 blood products, including red cells, platelets, and plasma, and emerged from a two-day coma after undergoing surgery at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Leave a Reply