Naperville Veteran Helps Austin Stabbing Victim, Hailed As Hero

AUSTIN, TX -- Leona Di Amore was visiting her daughter at the University of Texas at Austin when a terrible event occurred. A man with mental health problems had gone on a stabbing rampage, injuring three and killing one. While crowds fled from the carnage, Di Amore ran towards it.

Di Amore was once a Navy Corpsman, the Navy and Marine equivalent to an Army Medic. Her training kicked in and she approached a knife wound victim. "When there's a (expletive) storm, I'm running into it," Di Amore said, according to the Naperville Sun. "That's what Navy divers do in crisis situations."

The victim was a young man wearing a bloodied t-shirt. After moving to a more secluded area, with the knife-wielding man still on the loose, she instructed the victim to remove his shirt. What she found was a foot-long gash spanning from his shoulder to his neck so deep the bones were exposed, according to the Naperville Sun.

As a chiropractor, Di Amore is familiar with the bones of the back and neck. "He was bleeding profusely. I quite frankly didn't know if he was going to live," she said. In an attempt to keep the young man stable and calm until the ambulance arrived, she held the wound together with his shirt as best she could and spoke with him. She told him he may faint due to blood loss, and if he did, he would probably wake up with an IV in his arm and an oxygen mask over his mouth.

Then the authorities came to treat the victims. With only a few hours left until her flight back home, she returned to her hotel room covered in blood. She cleaned up, packed, and had enough time for a margarita before going to the airport to come home.

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