“I was heading home and I stopped at a red light and all of a sudden a car pulls in front of me and this guy gets out and he’s obviously in trouble — bleeding, I could see his shirt — he asked me for help and so I was just trying to help somebody,” he said.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said detectives “are investigating the incident to determine how the man was wounded.”
The man’s name and condition were not released.
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Car dash camera video shows the entire ordeal, from the man stopping his car in the Oregon District and jumping out to the hurried ride to the hospital.
“Initially, I was a little startled because his car had pulled in front of mine as if to block me from moving,” Lou said.
But after seeing that the man was wounded, and heard him yelling “I’ve been shot,” he said his fears subsided.
“My concern was just getting him help.”
Lou described the gunshot victim as understandably “very panicky.”
“He was trying to get me to hurry up, hurry up, go faster. I was going through red lights because it was an emergency, but I wanted to make sure we didn’t get hit by another car so I was kinda slowing down when I came to the intersections because I felt like to get there is better than getting in an accident ... I was going as fast as I could but not being foolish.”
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When Lou installed his dash camera, he likely never imagined recording himself taking a stranger who’d been shot to the hospital.
“I just thought it would be good to have a record of something in case anything happened, especially to deal with the insurance companies,” he said of the camera. “I just wanted to do something that would be proactive.”
Another proactive step was calling 911 after he reached the hospital parking lot, to alert them to the shooting victim who was able to run inside on his own.
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Almost right away, he said Miami Valley Hospital police arrived.
“They didn’t know really what my involvement was so their first concern was getting the situation to a point where they felt it was safe. So they first asked me to get out and they patted me down,” he said.
Lou said he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
He said and he hopes the man he helped recovers quickly.
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