I had just walked through the front door of a friend’s home in the seconds after Damar Hamlin went down on the field.
Her whole family had been watching the Bills-Bengals game after Hamlin’s hit and collapse.
This is “breaking news,” her 16-year-old son stressed to me, quickly asking if it was “something I needed to write about.”
I pulled out my phone and went right to Twitter for updates.
On Jan 2, I had never even heard of Damar Hamlin. But he became a household name for many of us that very night as we learned of the CPR efforts, his quick transport to a Cincinnati hospital, and the mystery swirling around his immediate condition.
On social media, someone with CPR expertise started weighing in. Hamlin had CPR performed on him for some nine to 10 minutes and, according to a post by a man who claimed to be a doctor with emergency room experience, 10 minutes is an awfully long time for CPR. Hamlin has got to be in tough shape, he surmised.
By now, both the TV in the kitchen and the living room are on. I’m firing through social media looking for any sign of his condition. News feeds are flooded with amateurs and professionals alike saying the game should be called off. What in God’s name was the NFL thinking?
Then we saw them all kneeling. All of the Buffalo Bills, ‘Bills’ Mafia’ as they are nicknamed, taking a knee on that field.
It’s an image we’ll see over and over for days and weeks to come; the indelible picture of a bunch of professionals built and fine-tuned for speed, endurance and strength broken down and huddled together, weeping and praying.
Within hours, a friend and “marketing rep” of Hamlin’s posted to Twitter saying the football player’s vitals were back to normal. In the days that followed, the updates got better and better. By the following Sunday, Hamlin was still in the hospital, but he was conscious, awake and live Tweeting during the Bills-Patriots game.
He posted a picture of himself in his hospital bed in a no. 3 hat and shirt reading, “Love For Damar.” He was making a heart symbol with his fingers, his parents sitting on the sides of his bed. That image was subsequently blasted to the supersonic bounds of social media and beyond.
But not everybody was happy about these constant updates on Damar Hamlin. I posted three updates about his condition on my personal Facebook page.
One retired police officer took aim at the Hamlin updates, which he felt were being broadcast by the minute. He wanted to know if there were any updates on “the police officers shot recently.”
I am happy to report in the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire – the Eagle-Tribune’s coverage area – there have been no recent reports of police officers shot. Thankfully.
But there is law enforcement news, a great story of survival and heroism, that received minimal national coverage this past week.
On Oct. 12, in Bristol, Connecticut, police officers Dustin DeMonte and Alex Hamzy were ambushed and murdered.
DeMonte and Hamzy, along with Officer Alec Iurato, were lured to a home with a fabricated story of a domestic dispute involving two brothers, officials said. More than 80 shots from an AR-15 were fired, killing DeMonte and Hamzy. Iurato also was wounded.
Surveillance video from Iurato’s body camera was released by the attorney general shortly after the incident. Disturbing and shrill, the video depicts Iurato, wounded and wincing in pain, managing to get to the front of the house that night. A woman is screaming and howling over and over again, sounding like a distressed animal, as Iurato makes his way behind a parked car.
The officer steadied and then fired one shot. “One down, suspect down,” Iurato said.
About 50 people gathered outside a Connecticut hospital after Iurato was treated and released. He went to his fellow officers’ funerals using crutches.
On Tuesday, Jan. 10, while many of us, including myself, were still focused on Damar Hamlin and football, there was a development in the Bristol investigation.
Iurato was named to the National Law Enforcement Hall of Fame. He’ll be officially inducted in March.
Follow staff reporter Jill Harmacinski on Twitter @EagleTribJill.
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