KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A young girl is recovering Monday after being shot while sleeping in her bed, and a Kansas City, Missouri, police officer is credited with saving the child's life.
"You get in a mindset that you have a job to do, and you fall back to your lowest level of training," KCPD Officer Jeremy Chick said.
Chick, assigned to Metro Patrol, used a tourniquet on the girl’s arm to stop the bleeding. He said he carries at least five tourniquets at all times while on the job. Had he not had one, Chick said the outcome Sunday night would have been different.
Chick and his partner, Officer Dillon Viet, responded to a drive-by shooting at 11:15 p.m. on the 8500 block of East 92nd Place on Sunday.
"We pull up, and we see mom is out in the front yard, waiving us in,” Viet said. “We run up there and enter the house, and she says her daughter has been shot, tells us where she’s at in the back bedroom. So we kind of make our way down the hallway, [and] there’s a blood trail going from the girl’s room.”
The girl, according to Chick, had lost “a lot” of blood.
“The floor was covered, bed was covered," he said.
Chick, relying on his training, immediately pulled out a tourniquet.
"I told her, 'Hey, this is going to hurt, but this is going to help,'" Chick said.
The 11-year-old’s injury was in the bicep, Chick said, so he had to put the tourniquet “high up on her arm to stop the artery.”
Viet, his partner, applied pressure on the girl's other wound to her stomach.
"Any type of emotions that you may have as a father myself – and I know Officer Chick is a father as well – any type of emotions or feelings that we have are going to have to come later on when she’s getting the best care that she needs and deserves," Viet said.
Saving the girl following a barrage of bullet is not first time that officer Chick has gone beyond his duty to protect and serve.
A few months ago, police brass recognized the seven-year veteran of the force for stopping and arresting a gunman.
"If not me, then who? If not us, then who?” Chick said. “Someone has to stand up for those that can’t or those that need our help.”
This is the fourth time Chick has used a tourniquet on the job. All four people survived their injuries.
