Preface and disclaimer: this is regarding the claim from DHS that Jonathan Ross developed “internal bleeding” after Renee Good’s car hit him. It is possible, and likely that this is simply a straight up lie. On the other hand, it may be stupid people’s interpretation of medical information.
Here are the salient points of the recorded encounter, which I assume everyone has seen by this time. It looks like the shooter made some kind of contact with the vehicle. With the recording slowed down, he appears to be either fending off with his arms or stabilizing his weapon on the hood. He doesn’t appear to make contact with his chest or abdomen. Those who support the shooting claim they see Ross getting hit by the car. Okay, for argument’s sake, I’ll give you that.
He was not pinned between the vehicle and another heavy object. He was not knocked down. He was able to get off three shots with his pistol and fire accurately. He certainly was not run over. He was walking immediately after the contact, upright and without any appearance of injury or discomfort as he followed the car before it crashed into another vehicle and a telephone pole. He passed someone else filming immediately after the incident, walking up the road at a normal pace, with no overt signs of injury and no rapid breathing.
DHS says he was seen after the incident at a local hospital and discharged the same day.
So, his mechanism of injury does not suggest any substantial risk of internal injuries. We don’t know what symptoms he had, but he also shows no signs of internal injury.
When he went to the hospital, he had to have some kind of test that would have led someone to say that he had “internal bleeding”. The term itself is problematic. It’s vague and doesn’t provide much information. It isn’t the kind of terminology that an emergency department physician would use. What the emergency department physician would say if he saw something that a layperson would typically call “internal bleeding” is intraperitoneal free fluid.
That’s what you see on an ultrasound or a CT scan of the abdomen. The tests can tell you it’s fluid, but nothing can tell you it’s blood for sure except surgery. Occasionally, the imaging studies find intraperitoneal free fluid in the course of trauma exams, which is incidental, that is, not related to any injury or disease.
When the emergency room physician or surgeon sees fluid in a trauma patient’s peritoneal cavity, they assume that it’s blood until proven otherwise.
Basically, there are three ways to prove otherwise: surgery, observation, and repeat imaging, or a completely negative history and physical exam.
Ross was discharged the same day. There was no report that he had surgery, and an exploratory laparotomy isn’t typically a same-day procedure . He wasn’t held for observation. This indicates that he had a completely negative history and examination. That means no associated injuries, no bruising of the abdominal wall or severe tenderness, normal vitals, normal blood tests and no dangerous mechanism of injury.
No matter how you cut it, DHS is full of shit.
Dedicated to the Game 