Eric Woods' injury - just "road rash"

Well, finally. This morning's Northwest Herald finally carries a story about the shooting injury of McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Eric Woods on March 15th. Hello? The date of the newspaper article is March 28, right above the story.

And Sheriff Nygren's description of Woods' injury in the first paragraph? "road rash".

Gee, that's strange. Someone at the range described his leg injury as a "gusher". As in maybe an artery? Is Flight-for-Life called for "road rash"? Is even an ambulance called for "road rash"?

I am having a really hard time containing myself as I write this. I want to describe Nygren's comments with some much-stronger words. It's a clear effort to white-wash a serious matter.

The delay in releasing any information to the press should in itself draw strong criticism to Nygren. But then "sanitizing" the story and minimizing the injuries is even worse.

What does this do to morale within the sheriff's department?

"Range officers, leades and Nygren will review what happened...", the article continues.

Who cares about a "review"? What somebody had better be doing is analyzing and ripping apart what happened! They'll never be able to understand what happened from the deputies' reports that were first obtained under a FOIA request by McHenry County Blog and reported on http://www.mchenrycountyblog.com/ Go to Cal Skinner's blog and read his article.

Take this one, for example, right from today's paper. "Deputy Eric Woods entered the room first" and then he was struck by a shot that was fired and fragmented after Deputy Michael Hart "entered the room a few minutes later."

"a few minutes later"??? How many minutes is "a few minutes later"? Three? Five? Eight? I'll bet the review will reveal a few seconds later, maybe 5-10-20 seconds.

As for the delay in "reviewing" what happened? Why wasn't this done in the days right after the injury occurred, before Sgt. Jim Wagner left for a conference? Surely, the sheriff knew he'd be gone. Was he hoping the whole mess at the range would just blow over?

There can be no excuse for not conducting an immediate analysis and critique of a shooting injury at the department's range. Did they even shut the range down?

There are working telephones at the sheriff's department and the location of the conference where Wagner was. Maybe even video-conferencing. If he couldn't be present in person, he certainly could have by phone. Business is conducted worldwide by telephone, but not at our own sheriff's department.

Unless you are in the I.C.E. unit, where detainees "go to court in Chicago" by teleconference.

Man, what a way to start a Sunday!