On Monday night, a man was shot close to his home in the northern city of Sakhnin. The circumstances of the incident were unclear. Passersby called emergency services for help. 

United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Abd Al Rahman Raya was driving on his way to visit this father when he received the alert on his communications device. He realized that the incident was only a few hundred meters away and immediately changed direction to make his way to the scene as quickly as possible.

Upon arriving at the location and making sure that the scene was safe for him to approach and treat his patient, Abd saw a man in his 20s who had suffered three gunshot wounds in his left leg and one in his back. The victim was being attended to by a man who described himself as a family doctor and had already started applying a tourniquet. Abd assisted the doctor and applied bandages on the man’s numerous wounds. A few minutes later, Naser Majid, another United Hatzalah EMT who works for a private ambulance company, arrived in his ambulance. He joined in the efforts to save the man and then proceeded to evacuate the victim to Galilee Medical Center in Naharia, where he was admitted in serious condition.

Abd reflected after the incident: “Shootings like this one were once virtually unheard of in Sakhnin, but recently they’ve become a relatively common occurrence, as they have in our society as a whole. To the best of my knowledge, this is the 8th case in the past few months. More needs to be done to stamp out this violence but in the meanwhile, I will continue to do what I can to help save lives.”

Naser added: “I come from Deir al-Asad, where these types of incidents are unfortunately frequent. It is a horrible phenomenon. Fortunately, we see that the police have recently invested more resources to root out this phenomenon. I thank God that, in spite of the violence, there are many individuals like Abd, the doctor, and myself, who are ready to drop whatever they are doing in order to save lives.”

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