Travis's Story: Life After Loss

“We, on a whim, just decided to go to the Oregon District,” Travis Osborne says. “We were celebrating my friend Logan’s 30th birthday. He had it the week prior, and we decided to celebrate it that day.” Travis and his friend had dinner, went to Ned Peppers Bar, made another stop, then returned to Ned Peppers.

“When all that happened from behind me, I heard a couple pop shots and I knew it wasn’t fireworks,” Travis says. “I heard about two shots behind me, and I got down. I said, ‘get down, get down’ because my first instinct was, ‘get out of the way because it’s probably not aiming for us.’ It wasn’t a split second later we all started getting shot. It was just a dull thud to where like, it’s hard to describe what immobility feels like.”

Travis says that there was a moment of just laying there, accepting whatever was about to happen because he didn’t have any control. “I kind of know where we were oriented, but I think my buddy Logan went down probably, well, he did go down in the same fashion I did … I was laying right next to him on the ground.” Travis says that his friend was coherent for a period of time, but it was short-lived. “He was hit bad enough to where he was on his way out shortly after it happened.”

Lt. Allen Dudziak, Dayton Fire Department, was on incident support that night. “We were sleeping and Medic 11 and engine 2 went for a shooting. Just the tone of the dispatch and all the sirens from police around, I had started heading out the door for it,” Lt. Dudziak recalls.

“While I was laying there, I was thinking to myself if somebody doesn’t show up soon, I’m going to bleed out,” Travis says. “When they showed up, they said, ‘what do you need?’ and I said, ‘I need a tourniquet on my right arm. Other than that, go help other people,’ because I knew people were dead … I saw it … there were people around me.”

“We didn’t know how many patients we had originally,” Lt. Dudziak says. “The police had already transported quite a few. We were still triaging patients … we were doing a search of the area to see if there were any more significant injuries that couldn’t come to us.”

Heather Price, BSN, RN, at Miami Valley Hospital, says that the team at the hospital was alerted that something bad was happening, and they weren’t sure at first how many patients would be brought to the hospital. “The police did what they are trained to do, and they started bringing those that could get out,” she recalls.

Amy Powell, Travis’ mother, got a phone call around 2 a.m. from an ER nurse. “They told me that he had been shot and that he was okay. And they explained that he was at Miami Valley … the main location. I told them I would be right there,” Amy says.

Randy Woods, MD, trauma surgeon, says that the emergency team helped to evaluate the patients as they came through the door. “We just didn’t have any information before the patient arrived. Many of our injuries were extremity injuries,” he says.

Katherine Fisher, Travis’ wife, received a text from Travis around midnight but was already in bed. “And then I woke up the next morning, texted him back, didn’t even know that a shooting had happened yet,” she says. “He didn’t answer. I tried to call Logan and I tried to call Mason and I tried to call Michael. Nobody’s responding to me and I’m panicked.” Katherine finally reached one of Travis’ cousins who told her that Travis had been shot.

Travis had surgery to reconstruct his arm, followed by a second surgery to clean up the debris that was in his arm.

“I was at the hospital every day with him,” Amy says. “You have the nurses and doctors all coming in, checking on him and taking care of him. And it was amazing. Anything Travis needed or anything any of the family needed, the nurses were right there, trying to help take care of it.”

“It takes a special kind of person to do the work that they do at the hospital and to provide the level of support that they do,” Travis says. “With losing somebody as close as Logan, it put me in a perspective to appreciate what I do have. Even if I had lost my arm, I’m here.”

Travis says that a lot of people were hurt by what happened, but he also saw a lot of good. “A lot of people came out, and seeing that, seeing all of the good to come out of everything, it makes it a lot easier to recover.”

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