"19 year old male, facial injuries post assault"
It was another busy sunday night. All the big London football clubs had been victorious in their respective matches, it was summer and the following day was a bank holiday. Combine the three and you have a) Drunks b) Fights and c) High call volume. We got the call about 2am to a high street in a north west London suburb. The place was pretty empty by now, a few small groups of kebab eating teens were staggering along, a few drunks were sat on benches and the odd group of girls squealing about nothing were audible. The street was protected by bollards at our end so we parked up and made our way in the direction of the police. Seemed sensible! Sure enough sat on the back step of the police van was our patient, hammered and bleeding from his face.
His nose was broken, that was painfully obvious, he had also lost his front tooth. A large lump encroached on his eyebrow from his forehead and the was a nice gash on his chin. He looked a state! Add to that the drunken bow-eyes, swaying and slurred gibberish and you have 'Saturday Night London' personified. I kind of felt sorry for him though. He looked so forlorn. He said he was running to catch the bus and a total stranger attacked him and ran off. I started to patch him up but the light was bad so we walked him back to the truck. The police can with us as they were trying to get details of the assailant. Far to much of our work is a result of fights or assaults. It doesn't paint a nice picture of the world we live in.
"So what exactly happened again?"
"I was walking home and these guys just hit me"
"I thought it was one guy"
"I can't really remember"
"Where abouts do you live?"
"Just round the corner"
"I thought you said you were running for a bus"
"Oh yeah, I was gonna go to a mates house"
Things weren't adding up. His story was changing and I didn't believe his injuries had come from a punch or punches for that matter. It was a pearler of a bump on his head and for a punch to do that, break the nose and the teeth seemed unlikely. He said no weapons were used and insisted he was attacked so we had to take is word for it. We treated him regardless, cleaned and dressed his wounds and applied pressure to his nose. He had to go to hospital so it didn't really matter what the circumstances were around his assault. My sympathy was waining as he started to become difficult. He pulled off the blood pressure cuff and was generally being a pain in the proverbial. No wonder he got a hiding. Just as we were about to leave another cop got in.
"Right, do you want to change your story at all about what happened"
"No"
"What if tell you we have CCTV of your 'attack'"
.......silence.......
"We have just watched you on camera. You ran into a lampost"
CASE CLOSED!