Epoch Times:
A New Mexico EMT who responded to the fatal crash involving country singer Kylie Rae Harris found that his own daughter had died in the same wreck, according to a local news report.
San Cristobal Volunteer Fire Department Deputy Chief Pedro Cruz responded to the scene in northern New Mexico on Sept. 4, finding his 16-year-old daughter, Maria Elena Cruz, had died, KRQE reported.
“He’s also an EMT, so he’s no stranger to going out on calls both medical, crashes and other things, but very traumatic for him to not know but to respond anyway and then find it was his family member,” Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said in the report.
“They just want the community to remember their daughter, Maria Elena, as kind, loving and caring,” said Taos County Fire Chief Mike Cordova, according to the New York Daily News. “Wonderful daughter, wonderful sister, and just kind-hearted soul.”
“She would always be there for other people if they’re like sad or anything, she was just good in every possible way,” said Alexandra Salazar, a friend of Cruz’s, reported KRQE.
Maria, according to the report, was heading home from work on Highway 522 on Wednesday evening. That’s when, officials said, Harris clipped her SUV with her Chevrolet Equinox before losing control of the vehicle. more
When I was in high school, one of my classmates was killed in a car accident. The ambulance driver (there were no EMTs back then) who was called to the wreck was her father.
That’s gotta be tough.
🙁
My dad was a firefighter in Detroit. He got called out but knew ahead of time who it was. My stepbrother, identified only by his feet, protected by the cow oy boots he was wearing. Selfish prick drove home from a concert heavily under the influence and high rates of speed, had a 17 year old kid in the car with him. We pray they died on impact because it took a whole team to extricate their cremains. My stepmother only weeps for her own loss, nothing for the 17 year olds family…. the apple didnt fall far from the tree. Shes a horrible person.
I’m guilty of not following Entertainment News because I have no idea who Kylie Rae Harris is. After a little digging I see she abused alcohol and subsequently caused this innocent young woman’s death. The victim’s family deserve a huge settlement against the estate / insurance of Kylie Rae Harris (stupid drunk).
It is never easy to respond to an incident when someone has been injured or died.
My thoughts and prayers go out to those who do it all the time because it is their job. You are God’s gift to us, and we can never thank you enough.
An article I read stated that Harris’ last social media post had to do with her gas gauge telling her she had 46 miles left while her destination was 36 miles. She had to go to social media with that, meaning she was texting while driving most likely. Texting while driving is illegal for people, but women, oh women, they are something more special than mere people. The laws don’t really apply to them. Female privilege killed this 16 year old. This absolute brat Harris should be vilified in the media, but she won’t be. Women are no longer criticized in our culture.
…Thank God that I never personally had to deal with this situation on a run, but I’ve known those who HAVE, and it’s not pretty. It happens, more often than you might think. Medics frequently live where they work, and their families have no special protection from God, so crap happens.
I only hope there was sufficient manpower that he didn’t have to treat her personally. Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to attempt to treat people you have a personal relationship with, because it’s very difficult to maintain objectivity and keep your emotions out of it so you can operate effectively.
I can only speak for myself, but talking to others I have found that this is not uncommon in medical care generally, that I usually compartmentalize in an emergency. Who I am and what emotions I have go behind a wall when the tones drop, and the part that stays out is focused entirely on the run and the needs of the moment, and works strictly from facts, protocols, training, and experience, and doesn’t consider how tragic it is that someone is so young/old/abused/crippled/had so much to live for, had so many people dependent on them, was a hateful beast who tried to kill responders, raped his daughter, drunkenly crashed into another car and killed a baby, held a baby in the front seat so the airbags squeezed its intestines out during the accident, whatever. That’s a patient. You have a professional responsibility to do your best for them, to the maximum extent of your training and experience.
And that’s it. Who they are and what they do and what they did to get there, good, bad, or indifferent, is never a consideration.
Do Your Job.
I’ve had highly emotional runs, more than I like to think about, but when everyone’s running around screaming, crying, threatening, panicking, I’m not going to help anyone by ALSO running around screaming, crying, threatening, panicking. That compartmentalization helps, just shove all the emotional parts over THERE, and be the calm, clinical professional taking care of the patient to provide the best possible outcome and, at the same time, people react to that and calm down themselves.
It’s important for your PATIENT, too. If you look at a human being avusled by various bits of car who is still conscious, it’s NOT going to help them if you start screaming, crying, throwing up, or even showing obvious signs of how serious you think it is. Clinically, this makes THEIR heart go faster if they see YOU’RE worried, and THAT can make them bleed out faster and also the new shot of adrenaline in their damaged system may cause them to do something stupid before you’re prepared to manage the effects, like pull an impaled object out themselves or try to get up with a shattered spine (Adrenaline masks pain), and THAT doesn’t help ANYONE.
The dynamic changes with a friend or family member.
It’s hard to be dispassionate about your wife suddenly bleeding during a pregnancy, your toddler choking on a dog toy, your niece with a bad back falling in your care and crying in pain because of it. It’s tough to keep the worry out of your face and your voice, the rising panic that tells you to fling them in a car and go hell-for-leather to the nearest hospital, drive like a lunatic, and damned be the policeman that tries to stop you. These are all understandable, human emotions that lead to panic, and panic leads to poor decision-making, which can lead to bad outcomes.
We had a discussion here before about busting for the hospital with a choking toddler, in fact. Is that right? Is that wrong? Well, it’s situational. If you live in the country and it takes an hour to get an ambulance, maybe it’s right. If you live in the country and an AIR ambulance can be there in a matter of minutes, maybe it’s WRONG. Maybe you can get that coin with a finger sweep. Or MAYBE you’re so upset you’ll just jam it deeper, changing from an uncomfortable child who is still breathing sufficiently to one who’s turning blue and needs an emergency tracheotomy in the next 3 minutes or he will die. Maybe you’ll get to the hospital OK, or maybe you’ll die in a car wreck while the child you put in the back seat unattended, quietly died some minutes before YOU did because no one was watching him while you did your Mario Andretti impersonation.
…The point is, it’s situational, and risk/benefit and proper/improper actions can be logically and coolly considered to produce the best outcome.
…or you can go charging off emotionally into the night and wreck at the first intersection you bust, killing everyone in YOUR car and a few in another BESIDES.
…Emotions are harder to deal with when it’s family. He needed to be told, then he needed to stay out of it, as long as there were other competent professionals there that could manage it as well as it could be managed.
God bless than man, and I pray for him and his family in this difficult time, and I pray for anyone faced with a loved one’s emergency care that they may have the Lord’s peace on them at such times to make the right decisions when it’s not so easy to do so, and never make a wrong one that they will blame themselves for, forever.
…also, even with a stranger…those emotions you pushed aside? They’re still THERE. You DON’T get a pass. You see some very upsetting things in the field, in an ER, in a hospital room in a surgical amphitheater, in a morgue. You WILL have to deal with them. That’s why fire departments, police departments, and hospitals have chaplains. And that’s why you SHOULD have the Lord. You’re only human, and it takes the strength of he that is MORE than human to help you through the darkness. I pray that man has that assurance, because he will have a much harder time dealing with it, if he does NOT.
There are some things yet that I left in the darkness from my long-ago runs that I still need to give to the Lord. As a young man, you think you’re so tough, nothing can get to you. Trust me, time will disabuse you of that notion, if you live long enough, and you WILL need the Lord.
As does this man.
As do we ALL.
God bless,
SNS
RIP Miss Cruz.
Think Harris will post more duck lip stupid pictures of herself after this?
She should go to jail for a very long time.
So sad for the Cruz family.
Hey beachmom, she died in the accident, she’ll be going to hell, not to jail.
@Rick, I missed where the country singer died. Early. Headache.
Clearer now. Visited the Chiropractor and now I can focus on more they may aching head. 🙂
I looked at Harris’s web page last night. It has her last social media post. Nothing after that. Not a thing.
It does have her performance schedule through this week, though.
I knew someone who was a state patrol officer. He had transferred to another area but was back to testify. He stopped by a friends house. The person I knew was in uniform because he drove his patrol car over. His friend was on call. They got a call that there was an accident with another trooper. He had been hit by a car when helping a disabled motorist. The person I knew responded with his friend. The third trooper had replaced the trooper I knew when he transferred. The third trooper was killed.
The trooper I knew said, “Time to put on my work face and do what I have to do.”
I have read an explanation from someone who has experienced PTSD from suffering through past trauma that PTSD isn’t just an emotional memory. With a PTSD attack, the victim actually experiences the whole trauma again. Trying to be rational about it does not work for the victim. That is what needs to be understood by those who have not experienced PTSD. Shaming someone who is affected by past trauma is very heartless.