NEW ORLEANS — According to the Metropolitain Crime Commission there've been 31 homicides and 53 shootings this year.
In 2022 Joe Cooper was shot and nearly lost his life, but thanks to new technology and advancement in medicine he was saved.
New Orleans EMS carry blood in their ambulances so for those bleeding out they can put blood back in before patients get to hospital, increasing the chance of survival.
Leslie Cooper was with her husband Joe when he was shot.
“Disbelief that this was happening. I'm a retired nurse. So I went in to keeping him with me… keeping him breathing... To be in, in that situation, bullets flying in the house that that was extremely terrifying.”
Joe Cooper nearly lost his life outside his own home as people attempted to break in.
“During an attempted home invasion, my husband was saving me and was shot four times by the perpetrators,” Leslie recalled. She said he was shot by a man who was looking for a delivery that he believed was sent to their house in Gentilly. In that moment she knew her husband needed emergency help.
“I heard him scream, and I knew exactly what had happened. Then he screamed again, and I heard him say, 'They shot me.'”
Every second that went by was precious time that mattered.
New Orleans EMS Captain Brooke Christy responded to the call.
“It was very chaotic… when I got there, he was laying on the kitchen floor… I knew immediately he was sick, he was hurt, he was injured, and we needed to go.”
Joe’s injuries were extensive, Christy said, “He had a pretty large caliber shot to the chest, and so which immediately, you know, means airway breathing, which is vital to life. So he had that. And then he had some lower extremity gunshot wounds as well.”
Christy knew Joe had already lost about a liter of blood and was losing more, and fast. “I knew the best thing for him was going to be getting blood in. So that's what we did.”
New Orleans EMS started carrying blood on board their ambulances in October of 2021. Since then they’ve administered to 240 people. Without that blood, some of those people may not have even made it to hospital.
“I'm replacing his blood loss with blood. I'm not replacing it with fluid anymore, which is ultimately not really the best thing to do we find for trauma patients.”
Capt. Christy said that blood she pumped into Joe very possibly saved his life, she said, “I will tell you that I think 85 to 90% chance that he would have not made it had he not had blood.”
New Orleans EMS is the only ambulance service in the state carrying blood, but this lifesaving development isn’t just saving gun-shot victims.
Capt. Christy said, “We've done it a couple of times in cardiac arrest, where we think that there's a bleeding source. I was able to give it in, in a female that lost a lot of blood secondary to a miscarriage.”
Thursday, Capt. Christy sat beside Leslie Cooper, the woman whose husband she saved that near-fatal day in 2022. Leslie says following the shooting Joe struggles with a slew of things.
“One of the bullets went through the diaphragm. He's having respiratory issues… his right side of his body doesn't work. His speech is difficult. He was an avid reader, and his vision was affected by this, (and) by the strokes."
33 years ago, Leslie and Joe Cooper said till death do us part. Joe took a bullet for Leslie, saving her life. Now Leslie strives daily to be her husband's rock, in turn, saving his.
“We joke that he's got about four and a half lives left out of those nine lives. And I'm gonna make sure that that we hold on to those for a while.”
New Orleans EMS says last December they lowered the age of eligible patients to receive blood transfusions from 12 to 5. NOPD says an arrest was made in this case.