Other heroes in the line of fire.
Duty: CDS Rescues 10 injured police and evacuates more than 600 people during the riots. A volunteer narrates his experience.

Published July 7th 2006 by El Diario de Hoy
Attack against Democracy
El Diario de Hoy
nacional@elsalvador.com

There is a saying that goes, “There is nothing better than the heart of a volunteer”.  Orlando Antonio Villalobos put this to the maximum test when this last Wednesday, he faced his fear of dying from bullets in order to rescue police officers that were injured in the street.

Villalobos is 23 years old and five of these he has been an EMT for Comandos de Salvamento

The image of the volunteer with the injured police officer on his shoulders was seen throughout the press. Accepting his fear,  this is his experience.

“We had an idea that there would be protests today, so that is why we made ourselves present just in case something were to happen.
We were around the 29a Ave. N. and we saw that protesters had blocked the road with tires.

Empezamos a avanzar y comenzaron a lanzar piedras a los policías. De pronto, nos sobresaltamos al escuchar que tronaba una arma de grueso calibre y que impactaba a los antimotines.

We started to go forward and some started to launch rocks at the police. All of a sudden, we hear the thunder of a high caliber weapon that shot at the riot police.

Someone yelled for help, so we had the ambulance get as close as we could to help the downed men where they were shot.

Even though there was shooting, we got out of the ambulance and started our work in giving first aid and evacuating the zone.

The first thing we did was protect the injured officers and bring them to a safe place in order to cover their injuries to see assure they did not lose alot of blood.  We were under the line of fire at this time.  One of the riot police fell to the ground where his equipment was taken off and we had to get him evacuated asap.

The police told us that they would cover us with fire so that we could evacuate the injured.  We had to find an alternative route through a construction zone of a home since we were in a cross fire.  He was two times heavier than I was, but I had to get him out of there, so I got him on my shoulders and climbed some stairs of a little hill. I never knew his name. He never told me, he only asked how were his other buddies.  Later he was brought to the hospital”.

It was one of my first experiences under bullets, and I already have five years with the Comandos de Salvamento.

He recalled that he entered the institution of CDS, when he studied in Santa Ana. “Ever since I was a child I saw the ambulances on T.V., and there was also in front of my school a little base of the “Comandos”.