Sparrow Hospital staff saved students injured by MSU gunman: How survivors are doing

Gunfire rang out in East Lansing on the night of Feb. 13, plunging the Michigan State University campus into a state of terror. When the rampage was over, the gunman took his own life, three students lay dead and five others were seriously injured.

The wounded — whose conditions all were critical — were rushed to E.W. Sparrow Hospital, a Level 1 trauma center that's about 3 miles away from the Michigan State campus.

Dr. Denny Martin, president of Sparrow Hospital, recalled Tuesday that he was in downtown Lansing's hip REO Town neighborhood a little after 8 p.m., when he got the news that several people had been shot on campus.

"My director of public safety texted me and said, 'This is a real threat. It's been validated.' ... So my first thought was get to the hospital as fast as I can," he told the Free Press on Tuesday, following a presentation at the Michigan State Medical Society Alliance’s Fall Focus Health Symposium, where he and Stephen Izzo, son of MSU men's basketball Coach Tom Izzo, shared their experiences on that tragic night.

Martin rushed to the hospital, coordinating a response that would save all five critically injured students who arrived in staccato-like fashion via ambulance that night.

Izzo, then a senior at MSU and a basketball player, said he was at the Breslin Center when it all began. He'd left to pick up his girlfriend, who was inside the Human Ecology Building, and had no idea how close he would come to danger.

'Then there were cop cars behind me'

"I said I'd pick her up so she didn't have to walk on campus late at night," Izzo said of his girlfriend, whose class was supposed to finish at 8:50 p.m.

As he drove toward the Human Ecology Building, which sits between the MSU Student Union and Berkey Hall — the two places where the gunman opened fire — Izzo said he saw police cars zip past him.

"I was kind of shocked, (thinking) that was really fast," said Izzo, who is now studying for a master's degree at MSU. "And then two other cop cars flew by me.

"All the cop cars were outside the Human Ecology Building, the Union and Berkey. I decided that I was going to pull in on Abbot Road, at the roundabout where the Union is. I decided to pull in there. I didn't really know what's going on. Then there were cop cars behind me and SWAT, and bigger SUVs."

He saw a group of students walking to the right of his car.

"I heard someone yell something like, 'Gun!' and then everyone took off running. ... I rolled down my window to ask the officers what to do. They said that there was an active shooter, and my car was, at this point, pretty much sandwiched in between" police vehicles.

Izzo said he pulled his car onto the sidewalk so he could get away from the area. He parked for a little while near Kedzie Hall, and kept his car running, waiting to see whether he could help any students who needed a ride. Eventually, Izzo ended up back at the Breslin Center, where he stayed until the next morning.

The experience shook him. For months afterward, Izzo said he could hear the wail of sirens that weren't there when he tried to sleep at night.

"For weeks, for months, I would say, when I would sleep, I could hear sirens just because I was ... in the area with the police sirens going on, and the lights. ... My ears were ringing, but it always sounded like sirens.

"It's just hard to see that something so bad could happen in someplace you love so much."

More staff, more operating rooms, more blood

The initial 911 call was made at 8:18 p.m., Martin said. He got notification minutes later, and by the time the MSU campuswide alert went out at 8:33 p.m., Martin said he was already at Sparrow Hospital, wearing surgical scrubs in case he was needed in the operating room.

The hospital always has two operating rooms ready for emergencies. That night, Martin said, it would need five.

"Who do we need to mobilize? Who do I need at the hospital? ... The initial call was eight individuals have been shot. At least five were en route to the hospital, but also the subject wasn't apprehended," he said. "So what was the scale? What was the number of patients that we would receive to the hospital? That was really some of the most important information for me to gather."

Martin picked up the phone, he said, and began to text and call in the staff he knew would be essential to the emergency response at the hospital: thoracic surgeons, specialty physicians, neurosurgeons, vascular surgeons.

His thoughts then turned to the blood supply and "making sure that somebody had reached out to the Red Cross. ... This is an event that we're going to likely use a lot of blood products to resuscitate patients.

"We immediately looked at ... our ER capacity," Martin said. "We moved a lot of people out. ... Our thought was, we needed to be able to handle at least a rush of 20 patients into the hospital. So we ... made room for 20.

"And then we started organizing teams. We assume in this kind of event that everyone's going to need to go to the operating room. From what we were hearing on the calls ... we could tell early on that these were individuals that had truly life-threatening injuries, so they would most all likely need to go to the room for immediate, immediate stabilization."

By 8:44 p.m., Martin said the hospital was notified that the first wounded student was on the way.

Giving medical workers time to check on family

Martin, who made national headlines in the days after the mass shooting for the vulnerability he showed during news conferences as he updated the public on the conditions of five wounded students, said the shooting was deeply personal for him and for many on his staff.

He is a Spartan himself, and is working on his third degree from MSU. Many on his staff, he said, were parents of students or had spouses or other loved ones on campus and were worried about their safety.

"There were staff that ... (were) trying to get ahold of their kid," Martin said. "They just needed that moment. They can't focus on taking care of another person if they're mentally somewhere else, worrying about their own child, or spouse or somebody working on campus.

"Sparrow was part of this community. MSU (is) our neighbor. ... People needed their time. Their priority was their family, and we obviously gave that to them because we needed their mind to be focused on what we were about to do, and that was ... care for a group of individuals coming in with some really severe injuries."

Although the Sparrow staff couldn't help the three students killed that night — Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner — his team showed up and did all they could to save the five injured by the gunman's bullets.

MSU survivors: Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez

Among them was Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez, who comes from a family of migrant workers in south Florida and was enrolled in the MSU College Assistance Migrant Program. She was struck by a pair of bullets while attending an arts and humanities class in Berkey Hall, her family said in a GoFundMe post. The bullets pierced her abdomen, affecting her spleen, lungs, colon, stomach and diaphragm.

Thirty-eight days after the shooting, in a heartfelt post to her GoFundMe page, Huapilla-Perez recalled what happened when the trajectory of her life changed forever:

"Parts of that night are very clear and others are blurred memories. I remember the sound of the first bullet shot. I remember calling my mom — afraid, so afraid that that would be the last time I talked to her. For her, a call she never expected but always feared receiving.

"I don't remember exactly when I got shot but I remember a classmate holding their shirt to my abdomen area. I can't remember the pain of my wounds but I can remember the pain I felt in my heart seeing this horrible tragedy unfold before me. I remember the rush to the hospital, feeling a deep sense of loneliness and fear. The ambulance ride to the hospital felt like it was 20 minutes long but seeing it afterwards, it was only a five-minute ride from campus. Time just didn't feel like it was on my side that night."

Huapilla-Perez recovered well enough to be able to move back to Florida with her family in April, but returned to Sparrow Hospital in late July for surgery to repair her colon, her older sister, Selena Huapilla-Perez, posted to her GoFundMe page.

"It's taken almost six months for Lupe's body to heal from the first surgery she had to undergo that night, and now, this new surgery requires additional time for healing. Her surgery went well and no complications arose. We are immensely grateful for the medical team who operated on Lupe and the health care workers who welcomed us back to Sparrow so warmly.

"For our family, it was an emotional rollercoaster being back at Sparrow. We were grateful that Lupe was taking one more step in her recovery — but it also resurfaced the sadness and pain we experienced when we first came in February. For now, Lupe needs plenty of time to rest.

"... The past six months have taught us that healing is not linear. We are learning to take everything one day at a time. Our family's priority continues to be Lupe's health and happiness and all we can ask for is continued prayers for her health and continued love and support for all of the students and families impacted."

Troy Forbush

Troy Forbush took a bullet to his chest.

A junior studying vocal performance and music education, Forbush also was in Berkey Hall when the gunman opened fire.

He tried to hide, crouching behind chairs, according to court documents detailed by the Lansing State Journal. Forbush begged the shooter to spare his life, but instead a bullet tore through his left lung, barely missing his heart.

He wrote in a Facebook post that his mother "answered the phone at 8:18 pm, just seconds after I was shot."

His mother, Krista Grettenberger, "rushed to the scene in minutes and held my hand all the way from Berkey Hall to the ambulance. Your presence gave me the reassurance I needed to stay awake and alert just a bit longer.

"You spent every night with me in my hospital room and slept on the pull-out couch because I was too afraid to be alone," he said.

Forbush underwent emergency surgery to repair the damage to his lungs, which are permanently scarred.

He spent a week in the intensive care unit and "three additional days being cared for by the superhero staff," he wrote in a Facebook post. "I was blessed to be the first individual discharged from Sparrow Hospital."

In the months since the shooting, Forbush has become an advocate for gun control measures, speaking at a March for Our Lives event and lobbying lawmakers.

Nate Statly

Attorneys for Forbush and three other MSU shooting victims filed documents with the Michigan Court of Claims in June, indicating they intend to sue Michigan State University for failing to adequately secure campus buildings to protect students, the Lansing State Journal reported.

Those documents also detailed the injuries suffered by Nate Statly, an MSU junior studying environmental biology and zoology, when he was shot that night inside Berkey Hall.

Fragments of the bullet that struck his head remain scattered throughout his brain. He was in a coma for months, and when he regained consciousness, Statly couldn't walk or talk, eat whole food or use the left side of his body.

"He's the light in our family, he never stops making us laugh, and he is loved by so many," his brother, Josh Statly, wrote on his GoFundMe page.

In an update published in July, Josh Statly, wrote that the family was thrilled to report some improvement.

"Nate has been on a difficult journey over the course of the 5 last months," he wrote. "He's spent time in a few different facilities, all working towards stabilizing his condition and then rehabilitation. It brings me great joy to say that his condition has vastly improved. ... Recently, Nate has given us so much hope by demonstrating his dedication and strength during the overnight stay for inpatient rehab. He's also been talking and laughing again, which has only reminded me how much happiness Nate can bring to a room, even in this situation."

Yukai (John) Hao

Yukai (John) Hao, an international student from China studying sports management, also was in Berkey when the shots rang out. He was trying to climb out a window, the Lansing State Journal reported, when he was hit.

Hao was paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet struck his spinal cord, according to a GoFundMe account created by Argent Qian, who said he was Hao's roommate and friend.

"The bullet severed John's spinal cord (t7-t8) and critically injured his lungs, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down," Qian wrote.

A fifth student wounded in the attack was not identified.

'All the emotions that you can have, I went through that'

Martin said he can't recall the order in which the students arrived at the hospital, only that "one EMS crew and a stretcher was followed like a train by another. So they were really kind of simultaneously coming through."

Initially, he said, "we were running on that high emotional adrenaline. ... Like for a lot of other people, I think it was in the days afterwards that you really realized what we all went through. It was, you know, it was tough.

"All the emotions that you can have, I went through that. And I think a lot of us did — from being sad and angry. ... I'm proud of the team and how we did."

It was a long time, he said, before he and the staff could be sure that all the students they'd treated would survive their injuries.

"They were all very critical," Martin said, so we didn't have that kind of reassurance for a while into their care. But ... everyone moved out of the ICU (intensive care unit)."

As the patients' outlooks improved, he said there were "little celebrations for us that we did a good job."

Healing from the emotional trauma from the night, he said, also has taken the staff at Sparrow time.

Michigan State, he said, "has always been a safe place. ... Whether you're in kindergarten or college, you shouldn't have to worry about this kind of event when you're just trying to learn and get on the road for the rest of your life and start a career. ... MSU is a special place for me."

Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@freepress.com. Subscribe to the Free Press.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Months later, the trauma of MSU shooting echoes for doctor, survivors