speedsix wrote:...anything that helps the truth of what happened to be nailed down is germaine to an accurate analysis...if the facts aren't right...neither can be the analysis...
...medicine sure has changed since I was on the streets...an aluminum brace/shield and enough white tape to stop traffic was for noses and wounds were bandaged...I bow to your experience, doubtless from more current times than mine...
...I haven't heard of a detective overlooking his injuries...but there are so many "camps", I guess I just haven't run across it yet...if there were injuries, there will be plenty of witnesses and physical evidence to support them...we've heard for days about all the blood...
RE: Current (a few years since I've ridden the box) EMS Procedures
Somewhere in the early ninties, stabilization of broken noses became contra-indicated, as did packing, etc. Of course that applies to the field and not a controlled environment such as an ER or ENT's office. Cold packs, which would do a great deal towards abating swelling and bruising was about the extent of what we would do and even that was applied by the patient.
We dressed all sorts of wounds, including head wounds. I was speaking specifically to the small "dings" one could expect from bouncing their head of the concrete. I'll use one case I remember specifically as an example.
A man decided to hit on his wife and she took him down and bounced his head off of the sidewalk three or four good whacks ( a little irony if you like that sort of thing). He had several small lacerations on the back of his scalp (like 1/8" or so) and bled like a stuck pig initially. We had the patient hold a gauze bandage over the wounds and apply pressure while we finished the assessment. By the time we got back to the head, the bleeding had stopped although a pretty good mat had formed in his short hair. We hit it with H
2O
2 and cleared away the coagulated blood, cleaned him up leaving what amounted to several little scabbed over cuts. At that point, maybe 20 minutes in, a dressing was not indicated and someone not specifically looking for the injuries could well have missed them.
So speculating a similar circumstance with Zimmerman; one officer's statement that he did not see the wounds and the lack of such visual indicators 8 hours later on an admittedly fuzzy video would be perfectly consistent.
As we watch this unfold, we need to remember that a laceration is a laceration regardless of severity, knuckles don't always show evidence of striking another (even multiple times) especially if the blood flow (that would have produced the inflammation) was interrupted by heart stoppage. Head wounds and broken nose don't always get dressed even if EMS is involved. If Zimmerman's attorney and police that responded are saying there was injury, I would bet they have evidence of such because they would have to know it would be tested.
