SB Strong: A First Responder’s Look Back at the San Bernardino Terror Attack One Year Later

It was Dec. 2, 2015, and Isabel Jaramillo decided she’d get to work a little early. It was a big day, after all. There was an important meeting with the bosses, so she’d better be prepared. She took note not to forget her full gear, especially her helmet.

But nothing could have fully prepared her for just how terribly big that day would become.

Her important meeting wasn’t scheduled until 11:30 a.m., but Jaramillo was at the San Bernardino County Probation headquarters about an hour early. In time to learn of the first 911 call — which went out at 10:59 a.m. — within a matter of moments. In time to hop in her Dodge Charger with her partner and speed over to the Inland Regional Center, which was less than 3 miles away and be among the first dozen emergency responders to arrive at ground zero.

“I run to my desk, I throw my gear on, listening to the radio, and I hear a couple of my old partners saying ‘Hey, we need help, we have bodies down,'” she recalled while talking to Patch just two-tenths of a mile from the IRC, 364 days after that tragic day. It’s the first time she’s been this close to the Center since the infamous terrorist attack took place.

“Once I heard that, I knew it was real,” she said. “So I got over here as fast as I could, took me maybe about four minutes to get here.”

Jaramillo knew exactly where to go after hearing that the shooting was at the conference center, which we would later learn happened at a holiday party attended by San Bernardino County Health Department workers. She had recently attended a training and graduation ceremony at the same location and knew the entrance well, which was at the back end of the facility.

"PURE EVIL"

“The first thing when I got out of my car and I ran towards the conference room — I remember saying out loud ‘Oh my God,'” she tells Patch while describing the scene upon first look. “Because it’s just something that you can’t prepare yourself to see.”

The glass doors to the room had been shattered and blown to bits during the spray of 100 bullets fired from assault weapons by Syed Rizwan Farook, a county environmental health specialist, and his wife Tashfeen Malik. Farook had been at the gathering with his coworkers but left briefly to return with Malik and carry out the attack the FBI says they had been planning together.

Department of Justice officials say the duo, clad in black tactical gear, opened fire on anyone who moved or made a sound. Three men who tried to rush at them and stop the terror were also shot. The terrorists then fled.

When Jaramillo arrived on the scene with her fellow probation officers, they were the first to start attending to the 36 shooting victims. The handful of others to arrive before them had moved on to searching the massive building complex for a possible shooter, uncertain what their status was.

Injured people and bodies were everywhere, Jaramillo said. Many had made their way to the outside of the conference center, crawling, walking, dragging each other out of hell.

“Just showing up to that initial scene, it’s is just something that I can’t even describe in words,” she said. “Just the chaos, just the bloodshed; the horror of seeing all that. It is hard to talk about.”

Her group got to work right away, getting the victims out of the IRC — no matter what it took.

“I can’t tell you how many people I helped out,” she said. “Maybe 10, 15. It was basically, ‘Hey, this person needs to go, let’s pick them up and take them’ ... ‘Hey, you grab a leg, you grab an arm, let’s get this person to safety.’”

One of the first women she came across had been shot in the leg and was bleeding profusely. Jaramillo helped load that victim into her own vehicle, which would become so saturated in blood that it was eventually taken out of service.

“I threw the keys at my partner and said, ‘Get her out of here.’”

That woman was taken directly to the hospital and survived. In fact, every victim that was ultimately transported to an area hospital — which all happened within a matter of 55 minutes of the shooting — survived.

But 14 people would not be so lucky and died at the hands of the terrorists in what’s now the third deadliest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, according to the DOJ.

Robert Adams, Isaac Amanios, Bennetta Bet-Badal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damian Meins, Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco and Michael Wetzel were all killed on Dec. 2, 2015.

“It’s still very fresh and raw in my mind,” Jaramillo said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. The emotions are still very real. I still get vivid images of first arriving on scene. It’s something that I can never forget. That day, it was just horrific. There’s no other way I can describe it. It was just evil.”

CLEARING THE CHAOS

The next step for Jaramillo was helping to clear out the adjacent buildings at the IRC, where hundreds of workers were huddled in fear for their lives, unsure of what was going on at their workplace.

Authorities, too, were still unsure where the shooters were and if they were waiting to attack again. But Jaramillo knew she had a job to do and committed herself to helping everyone else and not letting her own fear consume her.

“First thing [I thought upon entering the building] was that I’m glad that I brought my helmet today,” she said. “I had my helmet with me so it made me feel a little bit safe. I was scared. It’s not something you’ve ever been prepared for. We train for events like this, but once it actually happens, it’s scary.

“So, I was thinking, I might not come home today. But once I enter that building, it’s go time. There’s no turning back at that point.”

The probation officer, then 28, didn’t turn back and stayed at the IRC for about four hours helping however she could. The looks on the faces of those at the Center is something she’ll not soon forget.

“The fear and panic on their faces, it was unbelievable.”

The groups were eventually all escorted out of the buildings and away from the scene on nearby school buses.

A DEADLY SHOOTOUT

At 3:10 p.m., the day took another turn for all involved. Farook had been flagged in the case, and a surveillance team spotted him and Malik in a rented SUV near their Redlands home, about 15 minutes away from the IRC.

As a Redlands Police patrol sergeant approached in his vehicle, Malik fired shots from the back of the SUV. The ensuing gunfight between the suspects and law enforcement would end in their deaths on a neighborhood street.

FOREVER BOUND — SB STRONG

The coming days, weeks and months would by no means be easy for any of those involved, Jaramillo included. Authorities worked to piece the case together, at first hesitant to label the attack a terrorist incident. We would learn much more about the attackers as the investigation continued and the incident was studied. Critical Incident Reviews, such as this one from the Department of Justice, were put together to help “bring calm to the chaos.”

“...[I]f you would have asked us a little over a year ago if we believed there would be a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, I bet you that the majority of folks would [have said] that ‘No, there is no information to suggest one would occur here,’” San Bernardino Sheriff John McMahon told Patch in a phone interview this week.

“It’s not one of those high-valued or high-profile targets that you think of when you look at the big cities and large concentrations of people. But what it does show you is that these terrorists will and can attack in Middle America in a location that you would not expect, and it’s incumbent upon law enforcement to be prepared to deal with those types of attacks.

“We may not ever be able to solve or prevent all of them from occurring, but our primary responsibility is when they do occur, to be prepared and trained to respond to them. And I think what we saw on Dec. 2 was an incredible response, very professional, from the men and women of law enforcement and the first responders of San Bernardino.”

As for Jaramillo, she agrees that her training and preparation were key to helping her and her colleagues navigate the horrific scene. It’s an experience she said will forever bind them in a way that’s indescribable.

But most of all, she’s happy that she was able to help how she could.

“It was an awesome feeling knowing that we helped people, especially on a day like that where it was just pure chaos and evil that day,” she said.

She’s also happy she remembered her helmet.