Matt Patterson, a Lynn firefighter and paramedic, talks about assisting several victims of the Boston Marathon bombings until emergency responders arrived on the scene. (Item Photo / Angela Owens)
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Lynn firefighter made 'tourniquets out of belts and shoe strings'By Thor Jourgensen / The Daily Item
LYNN — The low-pitched boom silenced the crowd seated around Matt Patterson inside Abe and Louie's, and the explosion that followed drove the Lynn firefighter to his feet and toward the restaurant's front door.
Patterson pushed through other diners, shouting at them to move to the restaurant's kitchen, before running outside and clearing one, then a second barrier blocking off the Boston Marathon's finish line area along Boston's Boylston Street.
The 30-year-old Army veteran's training and firefighter paramedic skills kicked in as Patterson knelt next to a boy lying in the street. One of the blasts sheared off the boy's right leg and Patterson told a man who ran up to help him, "I need your belt."
After fashioning a makeshift tourniquet high up on the boy's thigh to stop the bleeding, Patterson lifted the child off the ground and ran for help while the man kept pressure on the tourniquet. He rushed the boy into the arms of emergency medical personnel and turned his attention to another boy lying on the ground who, he said, could not be saved.
A man lying on the street needed Patterson's attention and he applied a tourniquet to the man's injured leg.
"His pants were still smoking. We were making tourniquets out of belts and shoe strings," Patterson said.
By the time he finished aiding the man, Patterson said emergency workers had converged on the two Boylston Street blast sites and started to treat and move injured people. Patterson said not more than 10 minutes elapsed between the time he ran out of the restaurant and left Boylston so that medical professionals could do their jobs.
He walked with girlfriend Alex Gomes to Storrow Drive and the pair crossed to Cambridge where they waited in a city fire station for a friend to give them a ride home to Lynn.
A nine-year Fire Department veteran, Patterson served in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004.
"The difference is, in your wildest dreams, you never think you will have to triage a kid in the middle of Boylston Street," he said.
Fire Chief James McDonald on Tuesday said Patterson's response to the bombing typifies the professionalism and dedication that defines Lynn firefighters. He said Patterson promptly declined McDonald's offer to take a day off from work in the wake of Monday's events.
"He told me he would feel much better if he was around the guys doing his job," McDonald said.
Patterson and Gomes said their annual tradition of meeting with friends at Abe and Louie's on Patriots Day will continue next year.
"This was an attack on our way of life. You can't let them win," he said.
He would like to find out the condition of the boy he treated and described the child as 7 to 9 years old with the first name "Shawn" or "Shane."
