What Would You Do?

So there's a story that's been brought up a lot today.  It's the one about the fight and the lightning.  For those of you who have not heard this story, here is a quick recap.

Westlake High School and Langston-Hughes High School were playing each other in a football game.  There was a fight that broke out in the stands and apparently gun shots were heard.  As the fight was progressing, there was lightening that also caused a delayed game.  The game never got back underway, and at 11:30 pm was suspended.  They do not know if they will finish the game at a later date.

Now...  There has been a picture circling around the internet of the teams laying on their stomachs as they heard the gun shots.  There is no media talk about the gun shots or what happened.  Can you imagine being the athletic trainer at that school dealing with all those things going on?

Of course you are working on keeping everyone safe, but when is it unsafe for you as the AT to try to keep everyone else safe?  Instinct tells us as ATs to try to protect every athlete and every bystander.  But gun shots?  Is there a protocol out there for someone with a gun?  I know that at my current employer, we had an active shooter "training".  The local police came in at told us everything to do if there was an active shooter.  One of the things to do is if you see an injured person laying on the ground, only help them if you know that you are safe to do so.  But as an AT, I would want to help.  Can we as athletic trainers turn off the switch to help people so we can save ourselves?  I know that would be a hard thing for me to do.

To finish out what the active shooter training was...  Run, Hide, Fight.  That's what we were told to do in that order.  You run from the scene if you have a clear path, and that is when you are supposed to just leave the injured if you do not know where the shooter is.  If you don't have a clear path, you hide.  Find somewhere they cannot get into.  Somewhere you can barricade yourself in.  Put everything you can against the door.  Do anything to hide from this person.  And if neither of those are options for you, you fight.  And you fight hard.

As an AT, I was sitting in this training thinking how hard it would be to leave the injured, and how hard it would be to just run from the whole situation.  Our profession, we run toward chaos and injury, not away from it.  I guess you'll never know what you would do until you are in that situation.

For all the people at that game the other night - staff, students, and spectators - I hope everyone is doing well and there was no serious injuries that came out of that horrible night.

What do you think you would do in this situation?