YouTube shooting: Trauma surgeon assails ‘serious problem’ of everyday gun violence

A trauma surgeon at the San Francisco hospital who helped treat victims injured in Tuesday’s shooting at YouTube headquarters spoke passionately about the “serious problem” of gun violence in the United States.

“Once again we are confronted with the spectre of a mass casualty situation,” said Andre Campbell, a trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, during a news conference. “This is unfortunate and it continues.”

“To think that after we’ve seen Las Vegas, Parkland, the Pulse nightclub shooting, that we would see an end to this, but we have not,” he told reporters. “Once again this is a terrible day in the United States.”

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Three people suffered gunshot wounds after a woman opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in California, police said. A 36-year-old man is in critical condition, a woman, 32, in serious condition, and a woman, 27, is in fair condition, hospital spokesman, Brent Andrew, told reporters.

The shooter, identified by police as Nasim Aghdam, ultimately turned the weapon on herself. Investigators have said the 38-year-old believed she was “suppressed” by YouTube and told her family members she “hated” the company.

Campbell has worked for the past 23 years at San Francisco General Hospital working to repair injuries caused by gun violence.

 “Gun violence happens every day throughout the United States. It happens here in San Francisco. It happens in the Bay Area. It happens all over the country,” Campbell said.  “But I don’t see you guys out here because I’d like to make sure that people know that we got a serious problem that we need to address.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter:  "Gun violence happens every day throughout the United States. It happens here in San Francisco. It happens in the Bay Area. It happens all over the country," Campbell said.  "But I don't see you guys out here because I'd like to make sure that people know that we got a serious problem that we need to address."

“I don’t have all the answers, but I can say that at least we’re having a discussion about it nationally,” he said. “This is a real problem.”

He also criticized the media for ignoring other instances of gun violence, including a mass shooting that left five people injured including a police officer at a barbershop in San Francisco in late March.

“That’s the problem, when something like this happens, which is terribly unfortunate, then you guys come out,” Campbell said. “The reality is we have to deal with this all the time. We have to deal with the families.”

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Campbell is the latest health-care professional to enter the debate on the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S.

Following the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead, Dr. Heather Sher, a radiologist at the hospital who assessed students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, wrote a powerful op-ed in The Atlantic that detailed the horrific injuries suffered in the tragedy.

“The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?” Sher wrote.

Dr. Mauricio A. Escobar, Jr., a pediatric surgeon and chief of trauma at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, Wash., published his own first-hand account of the devastating effects bullets have on the human body.

“Gun violence affects children on a daily basis, not just from mass shootings at schools, but from suicide, homicide and accidental shootings,” he wrote on March 1. “This is an epidemic of senseless violence, horror and suffering.”

“As a physician, I can do my best to care for kids after they’ve been shot. But the legislature has the power to help prevent these shootings from occurring in the first place.”

— With a file from the Associated Press