Man with a dark past tries to halt gun violence in Detroit
DETROIT - His pager buzzed three times with a message: level one gsw pediatric. Life-threatening trauma. Gunshot wound. Child.
Ray Winans swiped his key card and opened the doors to the busiest emergency room in one of the deadliest U.S. cities.
"Where's the GSW?" he asked a security guard.
"Back over there."
Winans sidestepped a cluster of empty wheelchairs and strode down a long corridor.
"Where is he at?" he asked a nurse.
"Room 2."
Winans, 39, took a long breath, then pulled back the beige curtain. Mario Brown, who had just turned 17, had yet to arrive from a CT scan of his abdomen and the .22-caliber bullet lodged in it.
His sister, whose clasped hands rested on her lap, and his cousin, who had Mario's blood on his pants, were slumped in chairs against the wall. Both had tears in their eyes.
"I'm not the police," Winans told them. "I'm here to help you all. I'm here for you."
They stared at the empty bed.
Winans works for a program started two years ago at Detroit's Sinai-Grace Hospital aimed at breaking a cycle of violence that dates back decades.
It was started by an emergency
