Batman movie massacre: Officers pleaded for medical assistance as ambulance idled nearby

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As police officers pleaded for all available medics to converge on the scene of the Colorado movie theater massacre last week, a two-man ambulance crew and their rig were idling just a few miles away.

Radio traffic from last Friday showed emergency personnel struggling to grasp both the scope of the tragedy and mobilize a response.

The ambulance delays came during crucial minutes for the injured victims, though it's not clear whether a faster response would have saved more lives.

On the police radio transmissions, officers said they lacked sufficient medical support for about 30 minutes after the 911 calls came flooding in around 12:39 a.m. and that medical teams didn't report getting inside the theater for about 24 minutes. It wasn't clear whether police efforts to secure the multiplex contributed to the delay in getting medical teams inside.



Dispatchers began their response by quickly sending one ambulance to the scene, followed by another about three and a half minutes into the response. A third ambulance soon followed.

About nine minutes in, one officer in an urgent voice declared bluntly: "I need as many ambulances as we can." Four had been dispatched at that time, according to one person on the scanner traffic.

Eleven minutes in, a first responder again barks: "Dispatch, get me some ambulances!" A coordinator replied that Rural/Metro — the private ambulance provider for the area that also declined comment on the response — was sending all available units in Aurora.

Medical teams that were first to arrive appeared to deal with the wounded as they came upon them, which meant first handling the moviegoers who made it outside. That left other severely wounded patients inside the facility.

Over the span of 10 minutes, officials mentioned multiple times the situation of a child who they could not evacuate from the theater and needed rescue. About 15 minutes in, one officer asked whether he had permission to take victims with his car.

"I have a whole bunch of people shot out here and no rescue," he said in a hurried tone. The response came immediately: "Yes, load them up, get them in cars and get them out of here."

At 18 and 20 minutes in, police coordinators repeated their calls for more medical assistance. At 27 minutes, an officer was still reporting that they were loading patients into the back of patrol cars. "Any ambos we could get would be nice," he said.

District Fire Chief Jerry Rhodes said one of his units (the Cunningham unit) on duty that night had no idea about the turmoil unfolding a few miles away, in part, because they were likely sleeping due to the 24-hour-long shifts they typically staff. The department operates separately from Aurora officials but coordinates with them on a near-daily basis.