Yesterday’s post on Colin Bruley’s termination from Village Green Cos got me to thinking hard about how despicable this trend is of punishing Good Samaritans.

I decided to write my weekly newspaper column about the subject, and made a few phone calls to gather a few more facts. Which, through a fortunate chain of events, led me to a phone conversation with Mr. Bruley himself.

After talking with him, I was even more astonished at the brashness of his employer’s decision to fire him.  Since I’m not limited by column inches here, I can share a little more about what Bruley told me.

How They Terminated Him

Bruley was on medical leave at the time of the incident, so he did not report to work on Tuesday the 12th, the day the shooting took place.  He had called the property manager from his apartment the following morning, after she got to her office, and gave his report.

At about 5:30 pm, the property manager called Bruley and asked him to come down to her office.  It was there, during a teleconference with the area director, that he was told he would be terminated.

Bruley says his area director told him “I’m very disappointed with the way you handled this situation.” When he heard the woman screaming “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!”, he should have first called the property manager, then the area director, and then the police, after which he should have waited in his apartment for the police to arrive.

“That would have been a dumb thing to do,” Bruley told me. “This woman had been shot. The situation needed immediate attention. The property manager doesn’t even live on the property, and the area director is in a different state – in Cincinnati, Ohio.  I didn’t even have her phone number.”

Is Village Green Cos Being Truthful?

Bruley believes the real reasons they fired him are different from the ones they provided.  He bounced around the idea that maybe they didn’t like it that he was on medical leave. Personally, although I did not mention this to Bruley, I suspect it has something to with the fact that he had a weapon with him.

Here’s why I think that:

Three months earlier Bruley received a commendation from the company for diffusing a fight on the property and treating the wounds of a man hit in the head with a baseball bat. “I was told I handled that situation excellent,” Bruley said.

It seems the one thing Bruley did different this time was carry self-protection – which happened to be a gun. A touchy subject in some circles. But after listening to Bruley tell me about going deer and duck hunting while growing up in Michigan, I had no doubt he knew how to safely handle a gun.

Gutsy, But Not Alone

Amazingly, the shotgun Bruley took with him had only one shell in it, and it was bird shot at that. If you know anything about bird shot, it’s the same thing Dick Cheney was using when he shot his friend in the face a few years back.  It would have been enough to annoy somebody, but certainly not enough to bring someone down.

Given the fact that Bruley had only one shot, and that he did not know where the shooter was nor how many weapons or rounds he had, going out to find this shooting victim was a pretty gusty thing to do.

But know that he didn’t do this alone in Rambo-style. One of Bruley’s neighbors served 21 years in the US Navy, and it was the two of them together that went into the dark, calling out to the woman, “Where are you?”

Bruley said “I can see them terminating me if I was firing off rounds or if I had shot someone. But I didn’t do that. I saved a woman’s life.”

And that he did. He was the right person in the right place at the right time. Here’s why:

Bruley’s Medical Training

At age 18 Bruley took life support/first responder training, took nursing classes at college, and worked at a hospital—with a lot of experience transferring patients from the Life Flight helicopter to the emergency room.

“I had a lot of OJT dealing with emergency trauma situations,” Bruley said.

And that training paid off. They did not know where the woman was. He called out questions to assess the situation:

Where are you?
Where are you shot?
Where is the shooter?

Upon reaching the woman and examining the wound, he noticed an extraordinarily large amount of blood between the door of her apartment and where she was. He told his neighbor “it looks like a femoral artery wound.”  He handed his gun to the retired Navy man and applied a tourniquet, which he tended until the police arrived.

Bruley said that by the time the police arrived ten minutes later, he was pretty much covered with blood.

A tourniquet sounds rather drastic, but for those who have seen the movie Black Hawk Down, you may recall a scene in which an Army Ranger bleeds to death in Mogadishu (Somalia), despite his buddies desperately trying to stop the bleeding from a femoral artery wound.

Confirmation of Diagnosis

Bruley received confirmation of his diagnosis the next morning, when he received a visit from the victim’s sister. She told him her sister spent several hours in emergency surgery getting her femoral artery repaired.

She thanked Bruley for saving her sister’s life—because in the ten minutes it took for the police to get there, she probably would have bled to death. The doctors told her the tourniquet had definitely saved her leg, and probably her life.

After talking with this young man, needless to say I was impressed. And I believe he acted wtih courage, honor, and principled values.

And I stand by what I wrote yesterday. Employees are growing increasingly wary of stepping out to help others because of spineless jellyfish employers like Village Green Cos — who won’t take the time to consider the specifics of each case.

It’s a troublesome trend. If something even whiffs of a political hot potato, firing people is easier than having to defend their employees’ honor and dedication to helping their fellow human beings.

Such is NOT an example of workplace excellence.

And in this case, I’ll take it a step farther: Shame on you, Village Green Cos.

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Added 6/25/07: You may want to read My follow-up conversation with Colin Bruley

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