Firefighters Still Haunted by Playground Scene

As one ambulance sped away, its siren wailing, firefighter Gregg Steward waded back into a playground filled with frightened cries. When he glanced to his side, he was overwhelmed.

There, all alone, rested the tiny frame of Sierra Soto shrouded by a yellow tarp.

As he stood staring, a mother’s scream came from inside one of the preschool’s classrooms. Someone just told her, he figured.

So Steward walked over to the young girl’s body and knelt down. He stayed for nearly 40 minutes.

“I just decided what I needed to do was to be with her. I didn’t feel right leaving her alone,” said Steward, a captain in the Costa Mesa Fire Department. “If I was her parent, I would feel terrible if my child was out there all by herself.”

Steward said he’s seen plenty of death and destruction, but even the thick emotional callous he developed over his 21-year career couldn’t protect him from Monday’s gruesome scene.

Steward and many other veteran rescue workers continue to grapple with the horrid and senseless devastation they witnessed after a Santa Ana man rammed his Cadillac into a Costa Mesa playground filled with preschoolers Monday evening.

Special trauma counselors were called in to help them deal with the painful experience, and more private conversations continue inside fire stations as the rescue workers share their thoughts and personal accounts.

“I saw firefighters break down. I’ve never seen that before,” said Capt. Doug Wilson of the Costa Mesa Fire Department, which responded to the site along with engines from the Newport Beach Fire Department.

“Me? I was fine, as long as I had something to do,” Wilson said.

Engine 66 of Newport Beach was one of the first rescue units to arrive at the school, the Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center, and the captain was amazed by what he saw when he arrived:

Almost 30 people--neighbors, parents and bystanders--trying to lift the Cadillac off children trapped underneath.

“They started screaming at us for help as soon as we got there,” said Capt. Don Bradbury.

Bradbury immediately radioed for more help when he scanned the bodies and crumpled playground equipment before him.

When 4-year-old Sierra was pulled from underneath the car, paramedics realized she was dead. They covered her body and moved on to the other bloodied preschoolers, Bradbury said.

On the other side of the car, Brandon Wiener, 3, lay mortally wounded. Bradbury watched as paramedics loaded Brandon onto an ambulance with his mother, in tears and teetering on shock, at his side.

A teacher’s aide and four other children were also wounded. Victoria Sherman, 5, and Nicholas McHardy, 2, remain hospitalized with serious head injuries.

“It was by far the most severe thing I’ve ever seen,” said Bradbury, father of three older daughters. “It affected me. I needed to talk it out with the other firefighters. I asked to see a counselor.”

On Monday night, firefighters, police officers and other rescue workers gathered at the Costa Mesa Police Department to discuss the traumatic experience that touched them all. The event was hosted by Orange County chapter of the Trauma Intervention Program, a group of community volunteers that provide “emotional first aid” to trauma victims and their families, as well as emergency workers.

“You need a human connection in all this human tragedy,” said Sandy Hill, crisis team manager for the group.

Bradbury attended the program, but it didn’t help much. His mother lives in the neighborhood, and he’s often driven past the preschool playground when it teemed with happy little kids.

“I didn’t sleep great that night.”

Costa Mesa Fire Capt. Tom Hamilton lives just a block from the school and ran down the street to help as soon as he heard the sirens.

At first, Hamilton thought the driver, Steven Allen Abrams of Santa Ana, may have suffered a seizure, causing him to crash into the schoolyard. Abrams was still sitting in the driver’s seat, with a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, when Hamilton arrived. His windshield wipers were still on.

“He was just looking straight ahead, with kind of a blank look on his face, like he was in the Twilight Zone,” Hamilton said.

Only later did Hamilton hear Abrams tell a police officer that he rammed the children on purpose, that he wanted to kill innocent children to revenge a failed relationship with a woman who once lived in the neighborhood.

“Who would think anyone would do something like that?” Hamilton said. “It’s just hard to believe.”

On Wednesday, Orange County prosecutors charged Abrams with two counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. The 39-year-old ticket salesman could face the death penalty if convicted.

At the scene on Monday, Hamilton had spent most of his time helping the children who suffered minor injuries, reassuring them and their parents that they were going to pull through.

Hamilton and other members of the Costa Mesa Firefighters Assn. have offered to donate and build a “fortress-type” brick wall around the playground to replace the chain-link fence that Abrams’ Cadillac cut through like ribbon.

“It’s too bad it’s after the fact, but at least it would never happen again,” said Hamilton, who owns a small brick mason business on the side.

Many of the firefighters also showed up at Wednesday’s memorial service to offer their sympathies to the parents of the children killed or injured.

Steward was among them.

Steward said he’s seen lots of people die, children included, but usually in an accident or for medical reasons.

“You feel bad, but it’s easy to understand why it happened,” he said.

“Not this. When we found out what this guy’s intentions were, it made no sense.”