Nurse at Scene No Stranger to Such High-Profile Crime

The emergency room nurse who treated Rodney G. King after he was beaten two years ago has been subpoenaed 15 times since then and has been hospitalized twice for the stress of her involvement in the case.

Nevertheless, on Monday, as a Chatsworth man shot by a carjacker lay dying, it was the same nurse, Carol Denise Edwards, who swerved her car out of passing traffic to try to help, enmeshing herself in yet another high-profile crime and its probable legal aftermath.

The man that Edwards stopped to treat, 74-year-old Naghi Ghoraishy, had just been shot in the head by a gunman who stole Ghoraishy’s gold-colored Mercedes-Benz sedan. Ghoraishy died at the Mobil station despite Edwards’ best efforts.

“It’s a very frightening thing to see what’s happening,” Edwards said. “We’ll destroy ourselves unless people come out of themselves and get involved.”

As Edwards, who had just completed a 12-hour shift at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley, stopped in traffic near the gas station, she said she saw a man screaming for help as he hovered above another man lying on the ground.

“I thought maybe he was having a heart attack or a seizure,” Edwards said. “Being an E.R. nurse, I thought I’d help him.”

Jumping from her car, “I saw blood all over the ground,” Edwards said.

Within seconds, she had taken charge of the situation, working to clear Ghoraishy’s airway. He had been shot, she said, in the left cheek.

When she could find no pulse, Edwards enlisted the aid of a gas-station customer to help her perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She worked on the respiration while the other man compressed Ghoraishy’s chest.

Edwards said she was rewarded less than a minute later with “a good strong pulse.” But it did not last.

The nurse and the man continued the CPR, helped by a newly-arrived Los Angeles police officer. Paramedics took over about 10 minutes after Edwards had begun, she said, but eventually they declared Ghoraishy dead.

“I felt very saddened,” said Edwards, her eyes tearing up as they did often in an interview later that afternoon.

The urge to help is not unusual for Edwards, a Chatsworth resident who teaches CPR and parenting classes to community groups and pulls over at almost every accident where she feels she can be of assistance.

In the past two years, her position as witness in the case has cost her money from days of missed work and opportunities to take tests for promotions.

Just last week she spent four hours on the witness stand in the federal court trial of four police officers accused of violating King’s civil rights. She testified that she believed Officer Laurence Powell joked about King’s injuries after the beating, but that she did not believe Powell was taunting King.

“After what’s happened to me in the Rodney King case, I drove by an accident the other day and for the first time in my life, I had the feeling I didn’t want to stop,” she said.

As it happened, there were other people providing assistance at that accident scene. But when she was tested Monday, her fears didn’t stop Edwards from immediately offering her expertise to Ghoraishy. Or from sitting in a police station for hours Monday waiting to tell officers what she knew about the crime.

Or from heading back to work for another 12-hour shift after just two hours of sleep.

“I have to,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I’m a nurse.”