TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - 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.
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 said only one person could speak to him, a woman at the end of the line who'd been shot multiple times.
"I asked her where she was shot, she told me and I said, 'You're speaking to me, we'll be with you in a minute' and turned back around," he recalled. "She understood. She was awesome."
Compagno's engine mate, paramedic Colt Jackson, began work on Giffords, checking her breathing and stabilizing her neck as Engine 31 took over from the three men who were doing CPR on Christina.
Even at the scene, Jackson said, she replied to his voice by squeezing his hand.
Emergency responders said that within 25 minutes, the seven most critical patients had been taken from the scene by ambulance and helicopter.
All five members of Engine 31 rode to the hospital with Christina because she was so critical and Jackson rode with Giffords, who was the first to leave the scene. Christina was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Elsewhere in town, an organization called Crossroads of the West held 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 past shows, organizer Bob Templeton said. Gun enthusiasts mingled in the county fairgrounds building, discussing Second Amendment rights and buying handguns, rifles and other weapons.
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."
Tensions were still high in Tucson. One of the shooting victims, James Eric Fuller, was arrested after he threatened a tea party leader during a town hall meeting for an ABC News special, authorities said.
Fuller, 63, who was shot in the knee and the back, objected to something Trent Humphries said. Fuller took a picture of Humphries and yelled "you're dead," authorities said.
Fuller was arrested on disorderly conduct and threat charges, Pima County sheriff's spokesman Jason Ogan said. As he was being escorted out, deputies decided he needed a mental health evaluation and he was taken to a hospital.