Inside the Maine hospital that treated shooting victims

Police are stationed outside Central Maine Medical Center where victims are being treated after deadly mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, U.S. October 26, 2023. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

LEWISTON, Maine (Reuters) - Dr. Richard King was driving home from the Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday night when he received an urgent call from a fellow trauma surgeon alerting him that victims of a mass casualty event were flooding the hospital.

King, the trauma medical director, immediately turned around and sped through Lewiston's streets with his hazard lights flashing, arriving to discover what he later described in an interview as a nightmarish scene. The emergency room was overflowing with wounded and bleeding patients, casualties of the latest mass shooting to hit an American city.