40 First Responders Share The Cases That Stuck With Them

I'm not a first responder, but my sisters is a LEO.

Her worst story, was there were 2 junkies in town, non-violent criminals, who had multiple children together all which had been taken away by Children's Aid Services.

So there was a report that she had given birth, so CAS wanted police escort to go get the baby. They knocked on the door, the dad opened it, and just said, oh, you're here for the baby, walked across the room, picked up a swaddled baby and handed the child to my sister. She looked at the baby, (this was something like her 3rd or 4th actual shift) started shaking and crying, the seargent sees this, says give it and get back to the car. The baby had been dead for a couple days already.

My sister is ok with things now, but that one messed her up for a bit.

Volunteer Firefighter in Europe. Some summers ago we were called as first responders to a motorcycle accident. When we arrived the cyclist was obviously badly hurt after crashing in a car. But he was orientated and seemed okay, ambulance and helicopter were on their way already, so we just had to stabilize him. Not a minute later he started deteriorating, another minute later we started CPR.

One of the arriving bystanders was a trauma surgeon and started helping immediately, shortly after the doctor on the helicopter arrived. It was obvious that there was massive internal bleeding, they first tried to relieve pressure by puncturing and then pretty soon decided that the only chance was to open him up. So they managed a clamshell thoractomy in the middle of the street, and one started to give the heart direct compressions. The bleeding was massive and they discovered that there was a aortic rupture.

The blood loss was too extreme and he died there. Still to this day I have to drive slowly when I pass by that stretch of road.

Car wreck, late night heavily forested mountain road. Drunk woman flying down the highway, lost control and flipped the car multiple times. We arrive and shes unconscious, boarded and shipped. After about 45 minutes, we're gearing up to leave is when we find the empty baby car seat.

Took another 45 minutes to find the body.

Not a first responder but I work in the ED. One of our physician’s friends is a first responder and got a call for s*****e. It was his own house. His daughter hanged herself.

Instead of bringing up a f****d up call I'll bring up a funny one. We went for a call to meet the police for an a*****t, we get there the guy had been attacked with a frozen turkey. Whacked over the head with it. Big lump already formed. Guy had gotten into an argument with his old lady and she bopped him upside the head with the bird. He ended up fighting the cops and his wife and mother tried to jump in so I'm holding them back as the cops are wrestling with him. Cops ended up transporting him so we cleared and went back in service. Turns out the same guy had gotten whacked in the head by a 2x4 the week prior too.

Not to me directly but happened in our Firehouse years before (horror story from the 70's.)
It's shared with everyone to stress the importance of hazardous chemical exposure.


There was a chemical leak (I don't know what chemical exactly) and a subsequent fire.
The team responded and one of the firefighter's turnouts ended up getting pretty heavily soaked in the chemical bath. Upon returning to the firehouse, his young daughter was there waiting; she gave him a hug and got the chemical all over herself. The substance was extremely toxic and she got ill and eventually passed a couple days later. The firefighter went through extreme depression afterwards and ended up committing s*****e.


Never forget that safety protocols and regulations are written in blood.

Listened to a young p******ute get strangled to death by a crazy religious guy. She kept struggling for her cell phone, and I could hear the guy yelling crazy stuff about religion and her being a w***e. Because of the constant gasps and the phone being thrown around, it was initially hard to make out what was going on. It was a pay as you go phone so it was hard to find out where she was located exactly.

Eventually her noises stopped and the guy who did it was left huffing and puffing. Keeping an open line as I’m supposed to do, afterwards I heard a twinkling noise; turns out it was him urinating on her corpse.

The craziest part of this is that it didn’t even make the news. She was young, about 19 ish, indigenous girl if I recall correctly, this was 2009.

I don’t do call taking anymore but whenever people ask what the worst one was that was probably it.

The other one that haunted me was a guy called 911 and said he had a loaded gun and was going to k**l people in his apartment, and he told me over the phone I had five minutes to convince him not to do it (no one was hurt, thankfully, but he did have a gun, and had severe mental problems). I wasn’t very long on the job and there aren’t always crazy calls like that so needless to say this was a stressful experience.

Little 4 year old girl got ran over by her grandmother with a lawnmower that was on. It was not the gore or the blood that got me, it was the utter panic of the family, and the way they broke down when the helicopter took off with her inside.

I'm not a first responder anymore but one of my first arson cases was an absolutely hilarious disaster. This husband and wife hated each other but didn't want to get divorced. What they did want was a new house.

So they poured kerosene on approximately 60 rags and stuffed them under the end table next to the couch. Then placed an *empty* kerosene lamp on the end table.

Then they took a 5 gallon gas can full of gas, took the spout off, and placed it in their master bedroom closet. Their completely devoid of all clothing master bedroom closet except for two jackets with tassels with the price tags still on them. Then they opened all their safes and left them empty and open in the middle of the bedroom.

Then they took all the pictures out of the house and replaced them with random photos they printed off the internet.

Then they removed the televisions and replaced them with old tvs. They put the flat screen televisions in their barn.

Then they poured a clear trail of gasoline down the hallway.

Their alibi was that on the day of the fire, they were trying to sell their canoe. They finally got a buyer, but the only time they could meet the buyer was at 3 am that night. So they drove 2 hours away to sell a canoe at 3 am the very same night. They then tried to claim the unlit, non electric kerosene lamp must have exploded. Then they claimed that their c*******d neighbors were trying to frame them for arson. Then the husband claimed that his wife was trying to frame him for arson because she's quote "A Blackfoot Indian and they are notorious for not wanting to work". Then he claimed that Sears was trying to frame him for arson because they were tired of paying his settlement after being injured at work 25 years prior.

It was a good time.

One of my first calls ever, actually.

Calls drops on the radio, "so and so 40ish y/o female low blood sugar/diabetic complications..."

The EMT training me (E) and his paramedic partner (P) are familiar with the address and said it would be a good call for me to drive code 1 (lights and sirens) to, as each was very confident this woman wasn't dying. (It was my first code 1 experience)

We arrived to the scene and *just* before entering the residence, I'm talking on its very porch, E pulls me aside and says something to the effect of, "Now, when we go in there, the patient (PT) is going to be completely naked laying at the bottom of her stairs, she has bilateral, below the knee amputations (she ain't got legs), and when we give her some sugar, she's going to wake up and do naked, nubby gymnastics all over the place. Oh, and its going to be hot as hell inside because she gets cold when her sugar is low."

When E and I went inside, we were hit with 100° F room temperature on an already hot day.

P had already pulled up a chair in the living room and began adding demographic information and history to our patient care report, business as usual.

The patient, as promised, was laying at the bottom of her stairs, completely naked, completely disoriented (effectively the mind of a toddler), and legolas as can be.

As my first diabetic emergency, I was taking a back seat and observing E treat the PT.

E carefully approached PT and struggled with her a bit to get a BGL reading. Her sugar was alarmingly low for a healthy person, but not far from her average and certainly not her record low, as noted by E.

After obtained the BGL reading, E had the green light to attempt to administer a dose of oral glucose, a really sticky, really disgusting toothpaste-like substance. PT wasn't having it, she started spitting and pulling away and ultimately was left unchanged.

Now it was P's turn. A nice shot of glucagon and within minutes, PT was speaking in tongues and spinning naked cartwheels on her stumps, amazing. P had just sat back down when PT had gone face down, a*s up about 3ish feet in front of P. PT paused, and then started back up into a tantrum akin to an exorcism.

After several minutes of the most awkwardly surreal experience of my life, PT had transitioned into a sort of recovery phase that entailed sitting on the heating vent and shouting "I'm so cold!" at the top of her lungs over and over. No, we didn't adjust the thermostat.

Eventually PT became coherent and adamantly refused transport to the hospital for further treatment. Then, she ate the breakfast her daughter made and we left.






I've seen PT a few times since, but she's in prison now so its been awhile.

I've never seen her with clothes on, even during discharges from the hospital.

Edit: spelling, formatting, etc.

My first cardiac arrest call.


An old lady had woken up to her husband not breathing. He'd passed at some point during the night it seems, but all I was given at the start of the call was that he wasn't breathing, so I launched into CPR instructions.
They lived out of town, so it took the ambulance crew about 25 minutes to get out to them.
There was nothing crazy about the call and I've dealt with way more traumatic calls in the 2 years since, but at some point during the call, she realised he was gone and you could hear it in her voice.
That shift in tone is what sticks with me.

Obligatory “I’m not a first responder, but...”, I always wonder about the 911 operator that was on the phone with me when I found my (21F at the time) brother (24M) after he hung himself. It’s a bit blurry but I remember I was “calm” (in shock) and I think he started to ask if I needed fire, police, or ambulance and as soon as he spoke I said “my brother killed himself”. I think he asked if I could get him down and try CPR, but as soon as I said “his feet are blue” he knew he had passed and instructed me to go wait outside on my steps and to stay on the phone til the police got there. I kept saying things like “this is so f****d up, I’m sorry for swearing” and he said it’s okay. Later I found out that I found my brother about 14 hours after it happened. My poor parents were out of town on vacation too... I called them first before I even called 911. :( I always hope it didn’t make the operator sad.

I work in a region that covers a lot of forest area. I was patrolling and heading to recertify with my firearms when I passed vehicle tracks leading into the trees where vehicles aren't supposed to be. It wasn't unusual for that spot but I'd never been able to catch anyone up there. Because I was on a timetable, I figured I'd check in it on the way back to the office

After an hour or so, we got a bolo for a potentially s******l male. He was found dead a couple of hours later, in that exact area I was going to check. And now I can't help but wonder if he was alive when I drove by and I could have done something.

My mum qualified as an ambulance call handler. Once they qualify they go through a period where an experienced call handler sits with them and listens to the calls with them in case they have any trouble. She passed this with flying colours. It all went downhill after that though, here first ever 'solo call' was from a mother whose newish baby (few weeks I think but not really relevant I guess) had fallen out of the car door on an A road and went under the wheels of a lorry following behind her. Safe to say it f****d her up a bit but she carried on the job for years afterwards and now she's a student paramedic. So proud of her it's unbelievable!

A lighthearted one - my friend got a call from a very cross sounding old lady that was absolutely furious because her neighbors had stolen her plants. When my friend asked her how she knew it was them, the woman said “because there’s holes in my yard and She planted them in her f*****g garden! I’m going to go take them back, I have a shovel, and you probably wont get here in time to do anything about it!”

Thank goodness it was a slow day because my friend had to stay on the line for at least 15 minutes to convince her to wait for a cop to come by and talk to her neighbors for her.

Memorial Day, 1989. FF/EMT at the time. Call dispatched as a "car into a telephone pole." When we got there, I couldn't believe the carnage. A HS student had been given a muscle car as a birthday present. The police later estimated he was going over 90mph when he hit the pole head-on.

Patient's right femur was about six inches long, his patella almost touching his pelvis. The entire long bone had compressed like an accordion. He had other multiple injures. Took us two hours to cut him out of the car. The medics were pumping him so full of d***s to maintain his blood pressure they started to openly worry that they might f**k his kidneys up.

We finally got him out of the car (only time I've ever seen a KED used) on a gurney and took off for the hospital. Medic had two large-bore IVs going, and had a BP cuff wrapped around one of the bags to create his own "rapid infuser."

The kid lived. He ended up losing the foot on the leg that was destroyed, and that leg (from what I heard months later) was more metal than flesh.

The irony was that the kid was a NY State indoor track and field state champion runner.

A mother called because her kid pulled a pot of oil off the stove and it spilled on his face. she said she could see the skin peeling off his face.

Man blew his face off with a shotgun. Wasn’t dead yet. Scary s**t.

Also, a couple weeks ago I responded to a woman in labor. Get on scene, she had just delivered. She was naked and holding the baby with the cord still coming out of her v****a. She was high as hell and trying to shoot up one last time before she went with us. *With her bloodstream still feeding the baby through the cord.*

Edit: Thank you so much for the Wholesome Award hahaha.

When I delivered a woman's 14th kid in the back of the ambulance. The entire birth she was on the phone with her "friend" having her get the paperwork ready to surrender custody.

I'm not a first responder, but a dentistry student. Dentistry professionals can work in the hospital as trauma surgeons of the face. This facial surgeon showed us a case of a man that didn't pay his d**g dealers, they took hit to an empty field and blew his face off with a shotgun and left. Surprisingly the man survived and woke up half an hour later and called the police, they spent hours trying to pinpoint his exact locating because at this point he was somewhere in the middle of an open field and obviously he didn't had eyes anymore to help them. He was taken to the hospital and his surgery took 18 hours but he did survive.
Edit: today he lives in a rest home with a tube helping him breathe and another helping him eat.