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Violent crime remains a concern for residents of the nation’s capital. Action 8 spoke with a Montgomery surgeon to find out what doctors and nurses are dealing with every day. Emergency room doctors and nurses are on the front lines trying to put bodies back together after being torn apart by gunfire. Montgomery has seen 27 homicides so far this year, but for every homicide, there are seven gunshot or stabbing injuries. “It’s a worrying trend. We’re seeing more teenagers, more young people being hospitalized,” said Dr. Richard Mullins.
Dr. Richard Mullins has treated trauma patients at Baptist South Hospital in Montgomery for the past 14 years. He says the recent increase in gunshot wounds is alarming. “It’s gotten worse over the last few years. This 17-year-old boy was hospitalized after being shot twice in three months. On average, we’re seeing more than one gunshot a day,” said Dr. Mullins, one of only three trauma surgeons in the entirety of Montgomery County. “Injuries from assault rifles, AR-15s, AK-47s are just devastating. When you get shot with a pistol, it punctures your intestines or cuts them in half. When you get shot with these more powerful rifles, it rips your intestines apart. It rips your intestines apart.”
According to statistics from the state trauma registry, 92% of patients brought to Baptist South with gunshot wounds were shot in Montgomery County. “There’s a narrative that gang violence doesn’t really happen here, but when I talk to emergency room officers, a significant number of them would disagree,” Mullins said. There were 361 shooting victims in 2022. 29 were transported from outside the hospital, while the remaining 332 were transported to Baptist South from shooting scenes in Montgomery County. There were 429 shooting victims in 2023. 38 were transported from outside the hospital, while 391 were shot in Montgomery County.
And so far this year, 103 shooting victims have been treated in the three months from January to March. If we quadruple that, there could be 412 shootings in Montgomery by the end of 2024. “When you hear two or three gunshots at once, it’s overwhelming for everyone. We have very long emergency room wait times, not just in Baptist South, but throughout the city,” Mullins says. A recent article in the New York Times calculated the incidence of fatal shootings in U.S. cities. The article said that by 2023, Montgomery’s rate per 100,000 residents will surpass much larger cities like Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago. “It’s a very complex situation, but it’s going to take a lot of effort, time and money. The current ad-hoc approach (to tackling crime) is not going to work,” Mullins says. Dr. Mullins also told us that while many of the gunshot injuries they see happen between midnight and 3 or 4 a.m., they’re also seeing an increase in the number of gunshot injuries they treat during the day. The number of injuries from drive-by shootings has also increased.
