Man accused of pulling gun on someone ordering at Collier County Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thruLeague Club of Naples awards record $683K in grants to Collier, Lee nonprofits
Malcom Wilcox, 6, was shot while in a Fort Myers apartment complex Monday night. (A’Lani R Mendez/Facebook) FORT MYERS, Fla. – As an emergency room physician, Dr. David E. Goldner is prepared for just about any medical situation. But things are different when a child is rushed into the ER with a gunshot wound. “Children are definitely a special population,” said Goldner, who works at Lee Memorial Hospital. “It has to do with their level of comprehension of what’s going on. You obviously treat a 5-year-old different than a 15-year-old.” Child gunshot victims are not a regular occurrence at Lee Memorial. Out of nearly 2,000 trauma cases last year, only a few involved children. But community leaders, residents and others point to such instances as an indication of how crime has grasped a community: Malcolm Wilcox, 6, was shot while standing outside a building at the Landings at East Point Apartments in Fort Myers on Jan. 15. Investigators believe the shooters were targeting a man standing next to Malcolm’s mother, Jartravia Isom. Isom and Malcolm’s cousin, Tazyhion Matthews, 5, were both shot while inside a vehicle near the intersection of Dale Street and Veronica S. Shoemaker Boulevard in Sept. 2015. Malcolm was in the vehicle but was not injured. A two-year-old girl was shot in Oct. 2015 on the 500 block of Alabama Road in Lehigh Acres. Andrew Faust Jr., 5, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Oct. 2014. Treating a child with a bullet inside them makes an already stressful situation more challenging, said Rachel Hoopes, an ER nurse at Lee Memorial. “I think you go through all the emotions,” she said. “You feel sad. You feel sad for the family, empathy for them. You might feel upset with yourself that maybe you missed something or something didn’t go the way it should have gone.” Working in an emergency room requires handling a lot of moving parts, said Kristy Dutton, Lee Memorial’s director of emergency services. Knowing the medical procedures, physically moving equipment and people, keeping the flow of care moving and being compassionate and caring about the patients are among the responsibilities of medical professionals in the ER. “There’s always a feeling of, you know, ‘Did we do everything,'” Dutton said. “Could we have done anything more? Even though in their minds they know that they did. But it’s very hard, especially with children or people who are victims of violence who you know could not help this. It’s just really hard to take.” Ultimately, helping young gunshot victims is part of the job, said Shannon Biddix, a nurse who also works in Lee Memorial’s ER. “You get to see people at the worst moments of their life, help them go through that, help them deal with that stress,” she said. “But not everything’s the most horrible time. We get to see a lot of good things happen. We get to see a lot for families, things happen for the best of them. We get to see them go home, take their loved ones home. You know, help them get through the pain and suffering.”