EMT Stabbed in Throat During Transport, Prompting Ambulance Safety Upgrades

A patient stabbed a Gila Regional Medical Center EMT in the throat and hand during a February 18 transport from Mimbres to Silver City, accelerating a communications overhaul that EMS Director Eloy Medina said was already underway but moved faster because of the attack. The EMT is recovering.

Medina disclosed the details of the incident and the planned upgrades during a tour of the EMS department's facilities for the Rotary Club of Silver City. Six ambulances will receive a new radio system, including handheld radios for staff, by the beginning of April. The radios will connect ambulances and personnel to the same communications network used by the State Police and will include a panic button that lets dispatchers hear what is happening inside a vehicle when a crew member is in danger. GPS systems already on the ambulances can pinpoint their location within 10 feet.

"I've been doing this for 35 years, and it's the first time," Medina said of the stabbing. "We've been involved in wrestling matches, but something as violent as this, it's very unusual."

While Gila Regional has not changed any formal policies since the attack, the department reviewed safety procedures with staff, including a reminder to stand or sit behind patients with behavioral issues rather than next to them. Medina described the response as a reinforcement of situational awareness rather than a policy overhaul. EMT Fabiola Saenz said the conversations have shifted how staff carry themselves on calls.

"Eloy's been really good about talking about this and making us more aware, so I feel like we're more aware of things as well," Saenz said. "I feel like before, we got kind of comfortable."

The Rotary tour also offered a window into the scale and cost of Gila Regional's EMS operation. The ambulance bay held most of the active fleet, though Saenz noted a few were out for repairs. The fleet spans from a 1994 model still used for transports to four brand-new ambulances added three months ago. One of the new vans, used for patient transfers to hospitals in El Paso, Albuquerque and Las Cruces, had already logged nearly 9,000 miles in its first three months of service.

"This truck has been in service three months, and already has almost 9,000 miles on it," Medina said. Fully equipped, each ambulance costs about $710,000.

Each vehicle also carries at least one extrication tool, the hydraulic equipment commonly called the Jaws of Life, allowing crews to free patients from wreckage without waiting for a fire truck. Gila Regional had relied on a gas-powered extrication tool since 1998, carried on the 1994 ambulance. That tool was recently replaced with lighter, battery-operated models distributed across the fleet.

"Every truck is carrying one or two tools with them that have the ability to start cutting, spreading, getting steering columns off people, cutting roofs off of cars, things like that," Medina said. "We have to be self-sustained where we can do everything anywhere."

The department's most pressing gap is staffing. Medina said Gila Regional's EMS unit currently has about 12 open positions, a shortfall that adds pressure to a crew already logging thousands of miles a month across remote stretches of Grant and Hidalgo counties. The new radio system, with its panic feature and precise GPS tracking, represents the most immediate structural response to the February attack while that personnel deficit remains unresolved.