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    At a Nashville hospital, the agony of not being able to help school shooting victims

    A pediatric surgeon and his colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center had prepared for a mass casualty event, but the victims of Monday's shooting had already died by the time they arrived.
    by Becky Sullivan Mar 31, 2023 4 minutes
    Dr. Joseph Fusco (left) was on call Monday as an emergency pediatric trauma surgeon at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Dr. Alex Jahangir (right), who heads the Vanderbilt Center for Trauma, Burn and Emergency Surgery, helped lead changes to Vanderbilt's mass casualty response plan.

    On Monday morning, Dr. Joseph Fusco had begun what seemed like a normal workweek at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, where he specializes in children's cancer and neonatal surgeries.

    Soon after 10 a.m., after his routine morning rounds, the pediatric surgeon was on his way to the operating room when a page alerted him: An ambulance was en route to the Nashville hospital carrying a gravely wounded gunshot victim.

    Then came another page, and another, and another, and another. Three of the victims, he soon learned, were only 9 years old.

    Four miles from Vanderbilt's campus, a 28-year-old shooter had at the Covenant School, a private elementary school on the grounds of a church in Nashville's Green Hills neighborhood. Six were killed: head of school Katherine Koonce, custodian Mike Hill, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and three third-grade students — Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs.

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