Stories of heroism emerge following shooting at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital

SOUTH BRONX (WABC) -- Many stories of heroism emerged Friday following the deadly shooting inside Bronx Lebanon Hospital, from police rushing in to confront the gunman to doctors refusing to leave the side of patients despite the threat to their own lives.

Even on a normal day, a hospital is full of patients who can't fend for themselves.

But in the middle of all the chaos there were heroes who did not think twice about themselves. They took care of others first.

"That's when I panicked and then all of sudden my first instinct was the patients, taking care of the patients," said hospital employee Gonzalo Corazo.

Health care workers inside Bronx-Lebanon Hospital described the terrifying moments, trapped inside with a gunman on the loose.

Corazo says he and a dozen others, patients and employees, barricaded themselves inside a room for about an hour.

An hour that felt like an eternity.

"I saw one of the residents, he had a hole, he had a gunshot right on his hand," he said. "They just escorted us down the stairs one by one and we had to have our hands up."

There were so many others in those frantic moments who displayed incredible courage.

"Everybody started panicking and running around. At one point we smelled a little bit of fire," said assistant ambulance EMT Robert Maldonado.

Maldonado and his EMT partner Rafael Shimunov on the 9th floor smelled the smoke from the fire investigators say was a result of the shooter trying to burn himself.

The EMTs locked themselves in a room with a dozen doctors and nurses until they heard someone yell for EMTs.

That's when they chose to run out of that room into danger.

What they found was a doctor shot in the stomach.

They carried him, holding his wound so he wouldn't bleed out.

"He was in a lot of pain obviously. We carried him 9 floors. The police department helped carry, I helped put pressure on the wound, the entrance and exit wound and the police department they all just grabbed his legs, grabbed his arms," said Maldonado.

"We did the best we could. We tried to help," said Shimunov.

Those EMTs say it all came back to training.

For health care workers, EMTs and first responders, helping others is their main objective.

They say all they had to do was first stay calm, then focus on doing their jobs.