Tucson market opens; EMTs recount scene

Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz.

Veteran paramedic Tony Compagno stepped off Engine 30 and into hell: Panicked people rushed his crew, trying to pull them toward the injured, while three men desperately gave chest compressions to a 9-year-old girl.

Others cried out “Giffords! Giffords!” and pointed to a woman lying unconscious with a gunshot wound to the head.

Several other bodies already were covered with sheets.

Compagno and other paramedics on the first three engine trucks to respond to the mass shooting at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Jan. 8 meet-and-greet event recounted Saturday the scene that unfolded a week earlier as they rushed to count and triage the victims.

At the same time, the Safeway where the shooting happened reopened, and a memorial of flowers quickly grew outside.

Elsewhere in town, an organization called Crossroads of the West had a gun show, one of many it hosts in several Western states.

An estimated crowd of 4,000 showed up on the balmy Saturday, though the mood was less upbeat than at past shows, organizer Bob Templeton said.

The group considered canceling the event but decided Tuesday it would go on, said Templeton, adding that the shooting was not about gun rights but rather “a deranged person who was able to carry out whatever his agenda was.”

Also, Pima Community College released a video in response to a Los Angeles Times public-records request that shows suspected shooter Jared Loughner, 22, giving an improvised nighttime campus tour and rambling about free speech and the Constitution.

Loughner’s voice provides an angry narration that includes statements such as, “I’m gonna be homeless because of this school,” and calling Pima “a genocide school.”

College officials confirmed that the video, discovered on YouTube, led them to suspend Loughner from school Sept. 29.

On Saturday, as Compagno and fellow paramedics focused on their memories of the carnage, images from the rampage were sketched anew.

Compagno said he first came upon a woman lying unconscious on the ground in a pool of blood — he still doesn’t know who she was — and immediately realized the established system of triaging patients with color-coded tags would take too long.

As his colleague directed all the walking wounded and uninjured to leave, Compagno and his engineer, Kyle Canty, identified Giffords and 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green as the most-critical victims still alive.

Compagno’s engine mate, paramedic Colt Jackson, began work on Giffords as Engine 31 took over from the three men who were doing CPR on Christina.

Even at the scene, Jackson said, Giffords replied to his voice by squeezing his hand.

Giffords still was progressing Saturday, with doctors replacing the breathing tube that connected her to a ventilator — even though she’d been breathing on her own — with a tracheotomy tube in her windpipe.

They could soon know if she can speak, but they didn’t offer a time frame.