Ambulance Worker Who Responded To Lehigh Valley Mall Shooting Says Family Was There During Frightening Incident
WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. (CBS) -- Police are still searching for the person who fired shots inside the Lehigh Valley Mall over the weekend. CBS3 is learning more about two ambulance workers who responded to the scene that night.
One of them was struck in a hit-and-run while riding his motorcycle home after responding to the incident. He's in serious condition. The other ambulance worker responded while his family was shopping at the time inside the mall.
"My family and my children have been struggling with it the last couple days," Eddie Boyle of Centronia Ambulance said.
Boyle says he's practiced an active shooter situation before, even at the Lehigh Valley Mall. But he was not prepared for his own wife and daughter to be at the very place he was responding to when shots were fired in the mall near Allentown Saturday evening.
"There's a lot of things that go through your mind when you get a call like that - active shooter, things like that. And having your family in there, it really puts another sense of stress and anxiety on it," Boyle said.
Whitehall Township police say no one was injured during the shots fired but Centronia paramedic Sam Yerkes, who had responded to the incident, was traveling home from work later Saturday night when his co-workers say a car struck him, throwing him nearly 30 feet. His supervisor responded to the crash.
"It was one of our paramedics that actually stayed late for this active shooter at the mall," Cetronia paramedic Mat Diffenderfer said.
Yerkes was rushed to a nearby hospital in serious condition. But on Wednesday, with the aid of crutches, he was able to move around for the first time in days.
Meantime, so many people who were at the mall or responded to it are still reflecting on the Saturday night scare.
"We don't even know what the reason was. Did someone do it randomly or was a fight going on? Those are some of the questions that we don't have answered at this time," Boyle said.
The Whitehall Township police are still asking the public to send any cell phone video they might have captured at the scene.
