Late Sunday night, a terrorist opened fire on a crowd on the Las Vegas strip, killing 59 people and injuring more than 500 more. Local hospitals were flooded with victims from the attack, and the scene at many of these hospitals quickly became chaotic.
According to one doctor in Las Vegas, the victims just kept coming.
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Dr. Jay Coates, a trauma surgeon whose hospital took in many of the wounded, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter what it was like in the emergency room the night of the attack.
“I have no idea who I operated on,” Coates said. “They were coming in so fast, we were taking care of bodies. We were just trying to keep people from dying.”
Reports state that victims were coming in cars, as well as ambulances, and that the line of vehicles waiting on the ER was quite long for most of the night.
The victims of the shooting, which has become the deadliest in modern U.S. history, had hospitals like University Medical Center of Southern Nevada overflowing.
“Every bed was full,” Coates said of that night. “We had people in the hallways, people outside and more people coming in.”
Coates went on to say that the wounds on the victims made it very clear that this was no ordinary shooting, as they weren’t shot with ordinary weapons.
“It was very clear that the first patient I took back and operated on that this was a high-powered weapon. This wasn’t a normal street weapon. This was something that did a lot of damage when it entered the body.”
Victims are still being treated at local hospitals and Clark County has issued a state of emergency in order to get more help responding to the attack.
