Chaos in hospital after 18 killed in shooting in Maine, least violent state in US

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The staff of Central Maine Medical Center saw their hospital upended by a mass shooting in Lewiston that left 18 people dead..

Richard King was driving home from the Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday night when he received an urgent call from a fellow trauma surgeon alerting him that victims of a mass casualty event were flooding the hospital...

The staff of Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday joined a growing list of fellow doctors, nurses, orderlies and technicians working in cities from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Highland Park, Illinois and El Paso, Texas, who have seen their hospitals upended by incessant mass shootings in recent years...

King told Reuters by phone from inside the heavily guarded hospital that the 250-bed medical center had never seen anything resembling the fallout from the Lewiston shooting, which left 18 people dead and more than a dozen wounded...

In the aftermath of the shooting, King said the most difficult thing for him and other staff members, some of whom had family and loved ones who were killed, is coming to terms with the loss of life and tragedy that befell Lewiston, especially as the adrenaline of treating victims wears off...

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Lewiston is the second largest city in Maine. FBI ranked the state as the least violent in the nation. The number of those killed on October 25 was slightly below the average number of homicides in Maine for an entire year.