![]() ![]() The other two were offered work reassignments to seek treatment and reduce stress, and said they were satisfied with their agencies’ responses. Those three have each filed lawsuits asserting they’ve been mistreated. They said they were subjected to retaliation for speaking up. One said he was fired because of PTSD, another was fired for a mistake on the job, and a third was never cleared to return to work. ![]() Some of the five also would face indifference, resistance and harassment from the departments they served. “There are just some events that are so horrific that no human being should be able to just process that and put it away,” said Deborah Beidel, a University of Central Florida professor who runs a clinic called UCF Restores that treats first responders with PTSD. Going forward, they would relive that day in flashbacks and nightmares, see danger behind every closed door, and become irritable and impatient with spouses and coworkers. Even though most had responded to gruesome scenes of murder, suicide and car accidents, that didn’t prepare them for the psychological injury of PTSD. The invisible injuries to first responders represent another toll of the catastrophe.įor these five first responders - and many others - June 12 was the first day of their new lives, one in which they would confront post-traumatic stress disorder. Pulse was one of the nation’s largest mass shootings, where 49 people died and at least 53 others were wounded. “I’ve never been the same since, and I can’t go back.” “I never saw myself in this position,” he would later say. Outside the bathroom, his wife heard him saying, over and over again, how sorry he was for the victims. He looked in on his two sleeping children. the following day that he came back to his home in New Smyrna Beach, an hour northeast of Orlando. He spent four or five hours of that inside the nightclub, preparing bodies to be taken to the morgue, and it wasn’t until 2:30 a.m. ![]() Orlando Police officer Gerry Realin was called in from vacation on June 12 to work a 16-hour shift the morning after the shooting. It was surreal.Įmail address This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. She used the restroom, washed up and bought two coffees. People looked up from their coffee and breakfast, glanced at her and her partner, then back to the food. The restaurant had a TV with the news on, streaming live video of the scene she had just come from. Then, with a bucket of bleach and water, he helped clean the blood off the concrete.ĭown Orange Avenue, Alison Clarke and a fellow Orlando Police officer walked into a McDonald’s to use the bathroom. Stilwell wondered if the man survived the night. It was from a Pulse patron who had been shot in the stomach and dragged to that spot. In the dawn’s light, he saw a pool of coagulated blood in front of the station. Working at the station just 300 feet from Pulse nightclub, Stilwell was one of the first on scene hours earlier. That same morning, firefighter EMT Brian Stilwell walked back to Orlando Fire Department Station 5. Then, he shut the door to his bedroom, locked it and tried to sleep. He stripped his bloody uniform and gear off, put them in a trash bag, and took a shower. On the morning of June 12, 2016, police officer Omar Delgado pulled his cruiser up to his two-story townhome in Sanford, Florida, and sat in silence for 15 minutes, trying to process what he had seen during 3 1/2 hours inside the Pulse nightclub. This article was produced in partnership with WMFE, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ![]()
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