What do you do when a person is bleeding from a gunshot wound on the ground in front of you?

As a reporter on the Star’s breaking news desk, I’ve written many stories on shooting incidents across the city, but I never expected to find myself in one.

Yet, earlier this summer I ended up running barefoot from a friend’s house toward screams for help.

I came across a man hunched over on the grass. He’d been shot in the chest. His white T-shirt was soaked with blood.

He would survive, but in that moment neither he nor I knew that.

I tried my best to help. I knelt on the ground and put pressure on the wound. Then someone else came to lend a hand. But after paramedics and police took over, I was left with a feeling of uncertainty: Should I, or could I have done more?

So I talked to police, paramedics, and professionals to find out how a bystander can best take care of victims, and themselves, in such traumatic situations.

Here’s what I found:

Note: This story is not meant to be prescriptive and is no substitute for proper training — every shooting is different. It is meant only to empower someone with a little bit more knowledge than they might have had before, so you can learn what I’ve learned.

First, call 911

It’s always the first step. Don’t wait for someone else to call.

Second, make sure you’re safe

Stay in a safe area until you can be as certain as possible you are not in danger. Never run into an active shooter situation.

“If you’re hurt yourself, then you can’t help anybody, right?” said Erin Stankevicius, a Toronto paramedic with eight years experience.

Toronto Police Insp. Timothy Crone — who helped co-ordinate the police response to the Danforth shooting and April van attack with the Emergency Management and Public Order unit — said, if possible, to stay in a safe area while calling police. If you can’t safely get close, yell questions to an injured person to find out how hurt they are, and if they are awake.

Assess your state of mind

If you’re panicking and can’t focus, don’t force yourself to attempt first-aid.

“You need to know whether you can be of support or not. If you know that you can’t, you need to be out of the way,” said Rev. Sky Starr, who has worked with witnesses and survivors of gun violence as a first responder, a therapist, and a grief and trauma specialist.

“Not everyone is wired to step into a hectic and traumatizing situation and render first aid or render assistance,” Crone added.

If you don’t have medical training, check if anyone else does

Ask if any other bystanders have first-responder training, and defer to them.

Listen to the emergency dispatcher

When you call 911, you will get put through to police, then to an ambulance dispatch, Stankevicius said. That person can “coach you through the steps that you need to do.”

If you are with a group of people helping, put the dispatcher on speakerphone.

Don’t wing it ...

“Don’t do anything that you haven’t been trained to do,” Stankevicius said.

It could be dangerous to make a tourniquet — a strap or length of fabric tied very tightly around a person’s limb above a wound to cut off blood flow to a bleeding arm or leg — if you’re untrained, he said.

“The big thing with tourniquets are that once they’re applied, they cannot be removed until you get to the hospital.”

... but do apply pressure to the wound

If a wound is bleeding, use a relatively clean material such as a shirt and apply firm, steady pressure to the area, whether they’re conscious or not. CPR won’t be very effective if a person has lost too much blood.

Don’t move the victim unless there’s immediate danger, such as fire, or an unstable building, but if they are moving by themselves, don’t try to stop them, Stankevicius said. Instead, explain to them that you need to apply pressure to the wound and that they need to stay still, even though it hurts.

If the victim is conscious, talk to them

Ask their name. Try to keep them calm and keep them awake.

“Speak in a nice, inviting voice, soft, so as not to escalate the person’s emotions … and just say, how can I help you?” said Starr, adding you should always ask before touching a stranger, though they may in shock and unable to respond.

A bystander’s presence alone is incredibly valuable, Crone said.

“One of the biggest things that (survivors) all talk about afterwards is if someone was just there to talk to them, hold their hand, tell them everything’s gonna be OK.”

Maintain the situation until paramedics arrive

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“It’ll feel like a really long time because it’s a really high-stress situation, but the paramedics will be there in a really short amount of time,” Stankevicius said.

In Toronto, an ambulance should arrive in under 10 minutes, and can take over from you and other bystanders.

After it’s over, take care of yourself

When I reached out to Victim Services for this story, I found that my reaction to being a bystander wasn’t unusual: Executive Director Bonnie Levine said it “is very, very common for people to start feeling ‘somehow, if I had done something different, this wouldn’t have happened,’” or to feel guilt or helplessness.

Victim Services works with trauma victims in the direct aftermath of various crises, including shootings.

Levine said the other reaction to trauma is to “file it away” and pretend we’re unaffected.

The experience needs to be dealt with. Talk to someone you trust — talking through the experience can help a bystander realize they couldn’t have done more in the moment. If you need to, talk to a professional as well. If you can’t process what happened, it could come out in nightmares, or in sudden feelings of despair. Talk to a therapist, counsellor or attend group sessions.

Remember that you’re not alone. The ripple effect of an attack like a shooting can affect hundreds of people in a community, Starr said, which is why sharing with each other is so important.

“There is pain and hurt and other things in life,” Starr said. “We just have to walk through it the best we can.”

Other ways bystanders can help:

Help the victim’s loved ones. If a family member, friend or witness is panicking, they could get in the way of first-aid attempts. Speak to them in a measured voice and try and get them to sit down. Talk them through their breathing if they’re hyperventilating.

Take control of a crowd. A lot of bystanders yelling advice and asking questions could create a more panicked situation — it helps if someone can take control and speak confidently and calmly.

Don’t be a hero. Chasing down a shooter who is fleeing is a bad idea. You could become another victim.

Don’t move anything that may be evidence. Leave dropped shell casings or guns where they are. Make note of where you’ve seen things that could be evidence, and let police know.

Try not to talk in too much detail about the shooting with other witnesses. In the chaos and terror of something like a shooting, it’s natural to talk to those around you, in order to come to grips with what has just happened. But police want to know what you saw, and you could be influenced by what someone else says they saw.

Don’t film the wounded. Taking video of a shooting while it’s happening or a suspect fleeing might be helpful to police, but filming someone injured is unnecessary and may go against their wishes.

If you’re unable to assist and aren’t a witness, get to safety. Emergency services will need to get through to the injured person, and spectators can hamper that effort.

Learn what resources are available

Sunnybrook offers monthly courses in how to stop massive blood loss (and to tie a tourniquet!) through the Stop the Bleed program.

Know where you can get mental health support

Victim Services offers immediate crisis response and also provide counselling options near you: 416-808-7066.

What’s Up Walk-In provides free mental health counselling, with no appointment or health card necessary. Information on their six Toronto locations can be found at whatsupwalkin.ca.

The Victim Services Directory allows you to input your postal code, specify your need, and see a list of resources near you.

Out of Bounds helps with loss and trauma, and specifically loss due to gun violence. The program operates mostly in the Jane and Finch area.