By Amanda Michelle Gomez, Washington City Paper, August 30, 2019
October 30, 2018 was different—that was the day the job got personal for Beverly Smith-Brown. She works for the Alliance of Concerned Men, where she’s on alert 24-hours a day, seven days a week, to respond when residents suffer gunshot and stab wounds in Southeast D.C. While working as a trauma-informed advocate at a crime scene in Ward 8, she got a phone call from her sister: Her nephew, 25-year-old Taquan Smith, was shot multiple times on Alabama Avenue SE.
The paramedics rushed him to MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Northwest D.C., roughly a 30-minute drive away with light traffic. That’s because there is no hospital with a trauma center east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, neighborhoods where mostly black residents reside.
“He did not make it—there’s a lot of situations like that,” says Smith-Brown. “I’ve seen people die on the way to the hospital. They didn’t make it.”
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