The Sacrifice (4 page)

OCTOBER 7, 1987

S
he’d been left to die.

She’d been beaten, and raped, and left to die.

She’d been hog-tied, beaten and raped and left to die.

Just a girl, a young black girl. Dragged into the cellar of the old fish-factory and if she hadn’t worked the gag out of her mouth, to call for help, she’d have died there in all that filth.

It was that 911 call. That call you’d been waiting for.

You’d expect it to be late Saturday night. Or Friday night. Could be Thursday night. You would not expect the call to be Sunday morning.

And that neighborhood by the river, East Ventor and Depp. Those blocks east of Camden Avenue.
High-crime area
the newspapers call it. After the fires and looting of August 1967 spilling over from the massive riot in Newark, the neighborhood hadn’t ever recovered, Camden Avenue west for five or six miles looking like a
war zone twenty years later, shuttered storefronts, dilapidated and abandoned houses, burnt-out shells of houses, littered vacant lots and crudely hand-lettered signs
FOR RENT FOR SALE
that looked as if they’d been there for years.

Many times, the calls come too late. The gunfire-victim is dead, bled out in the street. The baby has suffocated, or has been burnt to death in a spillage of boiling water off a stove. Or the baby’s brains have been shaken past repair. Or there’s been a “gas accident.” Or a child has discovered a (loaded) firearm wanting to play with his younger sister. Or a man has returned to his home at the wrong time. Or a drug deal has gone wrong. (This is frequent.) Or a drug dose has gone wrong. (This is frequent.) Or a space heater has caught fire. Or a carelessly flung burning cigarette has caught fire. Or a woman has swallowed Drano and has lain down to die. Or a gang of boys has exchanged multiple shots with another gang of boys. Or a pit bull maddened by hunger has attacked, sunk its fangs into an ankle and will not release the crushed bones until shots from a police service revolver are fired into its brain.

Calls of desperation, dread. But exhilaration in being so summoned, in a speeding ambulance, siren piercing the air like a glittering scimitar.

You are propelled by this speed. You are addicted to the thrill of danger, this not-knowing into which you plunge like a swimmer diving into a swirling river to “rescue” whoever he can.

But now there is
this call
—to change your life in a way you will regret.

Damn it wasn’t true the ambulance had
taken its time
getting there! Sixteen minutes but we’d been slowed down on the bridge and the 911 dispatcher had given us an incomplete address.

It being a
black neighborhood
, it would be claimed. The EMTs from St. Anne’s had
taken their time.

We’d responded to the dispatcher as we always did.

We said, there was no difference between this emergency summons and any other—except what would be made of it, later.

When we arrived at the corner of East Ventor and Depp we hadn’t known immediately where to go. The dispatcher hadn’t been told clearly where the injured girl was.

Something about a factory. Factory cellar.

So we’d wasted minutes determining what this meant. We’d been told “cellar”—so we had flashlights in case flashlights were needed. Searching for a way through the chain-link fence until a woman appeared and screamed at us about a “dying girl”—a girl “bleeding to death”—and directed us where she was.

First thing we observed was that the girl (later identified as “Sybilla Frye”) lying on her side on the cellar floor on a strip of tarpaulin seemed to be
conscious
but would not respond to us, as if she was
unconscious.

When we came running down into the cellar with flashlights we saw that the girl’s eyes were open but immediately then she shut them when the light came onto her face. We saw her lift her hands to hide her face from the bright light.

It was our concern that the girl was in severe physical distress, in shock, or bleeding internally, we had to determine immediately, or try to determine, before lifting her onto a stretcher.

Her face was bloodied and battered. There was a towel or a rag partly tied around her head and her hair was matted with filth.

There were no evident deep lacerations of the kind made with a sharp weapon or gunshot. Wounds were superficial, though bloody. There did not appear to be a severe or life-threatening loss of blood.

There was a strong smell of excrement—possibly human, or animal.

It looked like the girl had been tied with a clothesline but when we arrived, the clothesline had been untied. The woman who’d met us outside said she’d found the girl tied and had untied the girl. Her wrists and ankles had been tied behind her—“hog-tied.”

Well, we thought there was something strange—the injured girl had been communicating with the woman who’d found her, the woman told us—but then, she wouldn’t communicate with
us.

She was limp and her arms were, like, falling loose—like a person would be if she was unconscious. But when we touched her she stiffened up. She’d shut her eyes tight and kept them shut.

That girl was in a state of shock! She didn’t know who we were.

We identified ourselves. She had to know we were a rescue team.

But she was scared! She was terrified. She was just a girl and somebody had almost killed her. She might’ve thought we were her assailants coming back. She was shivering—her skin felt clammy when I touched her.

She never did talk to us. Not a word.

It was possible, I thought, she was—you know—mentally disabled like retarded, or autistic. She communicated with
me . . .

She did not communicate with you. She was not observed communicating with you.

She didn’t
talk
to me exactly but, but she—
communicated . . .

Look—this was not a “cooperative” individual. First thing when we came down into the cellar with flashlights we saw the girl’s eyes were open and she’s staring at us—then, she shut her eyes. We saw her lifting her hands to hide her face from the bright light—which you wouldn’t do if you were
unconscious.

The lights blinded her and scared her . . .

Had a damn hard time taking her blood pressure and pulse and
trying to check for injuries, she kept bending her legs and wouldn’t lay them flat so we could strap her down.

Sometimes it happens, an injured person is panicked and doesn’t want to be taken to the ER.

But this girl refused to talk to us. She wasn’t screaming or saying she didn’t want medical treatment. She wasn’t hysterical or crazy. She was trying to simulate being unconscious but she was awake and alert. You could see her eyeballs kind of jerking around behind her eyelids. You could see she’d been assaulted, a strong possibility she’d been raped, her clothes were torn partly off except she was still wearing jeans—bloodied jeans.

The visible injuries were lacerations and bruises on her face, her chest, her belly—where her clothes had been ripped, you could see.

The woman had been screaming the girl was “bleeding to death” but that was not the case.

Most of the blood appeared to be dried, coagulated. Whenever she’d been beaten, it hadn’t been recently.

She’d been beaten and left to die! Tied and a gag in her mouth and left to die in that nasty place! When we found her, she was in a state of shock.

Actually she was not in a “state of shock”—her blood pressure wasn’t low, we discovered when we were finally able to take it, and her pulse was fast.

She was in, like, emotional shock . . .

The woman was explaining she’d been wakened by “some kind of crying” in the night then in the morning she’d searched outside and found the girl tied and bleeding and left to die and she was worried since she’d moved the girl a little, started to lift her off the tarpaulin, maybe the girl had a skull fracture or broken spine or internal injuries she might’ve made worse, she wanted to tell us that.

The woman was kind of hysterical herself. She looked like her
heart was jumping all over inside her chest. Said she was a schoolteacher and the girl had been one of her pupils . . .

Kept saying she’d thought the girl had been thrown down from some height, and her back was broken. She’d thought the girl was bleeding to death, that’s what she’d told us when we first arrived. And the girl had been raped, she was sure of
that
. . .

She’d wanted to come in the ambulance with us but we had to tell her
no.
We told her to notify the girl’s mother.

That poor girl was in a state like panic. Maybe it wasn’t “shock” but she was panting—hyperventilating. Her skin was clammy like death.

Well—anybody would be scared and upset, in her circumstances. With just the flashlights we could see it had been a vicious attack. And you’d think for sure, rape. The disgusting thing was what was smeared in her hair and on the parts of her body that had been naked—mud and dog shit. And in the ambulance we saw something spelled out on her body.

These nasty words! Smeared in dog shit on that poor girl.

It wasn’t
dog shit
the words were written in, it was some kind of smeared ink like a marker pen.

It was dog shit, too. I saw it.

The scrawled words were in black marker pen. It was hard to make out what they were because the ink was smeared, and the girl’s skin was kind of dark . . .

The thing is, if you are unconscious, your limbs are not stiff and you don’t resist medical intervention. If you are conscious, you might resist—if you are terrified and panicked. But we got a blood pressure reading finally and she wasn’t in shock—or anywhere near—her pressure was 130 over 115. Her pulse was fast but not racing.

You could see that somebody had hurt her bad! There’d been
more than one of them, they’d kicked her and cut her and left her to die in that nasty place.

In the ER in the bright lights you could see these words scrawled on her chest and belly you couldn’t read too well because the letters were smeared and distorted NIGRA BITCH KU KUX KLANN.

(Right away I had to wonder—why’d anybody write words on somebody’s body
upside-down
?)

NIGRA BITCH—this was just below the girl’s breasts, on her midriff.

KU KUX KLANN—this was on the girl’s belly just above her navel.

Photos were taken of these racist words as photos were taken of the girl’s injuries. This is ER procedure in such cases. When the flashes went off Sybilla Frye tried to hide her face making a wailing sound like
Noooo.

It was our assumption she’d been raped—very possibly, gang-raped. Her clothes were ripped and bloody and her lower belly and thighs were bruised, we saw when we got the jeans pulled down. (She fought us pretty desperately about that—pulling down her jeans.) Her face had sustained the worst injuries. Both her eyes were blackened and her upper lip was swollen to twice its size, like a goiter.

A brutal gang-rape is not a common incident even in inner-city Pascayne. Yet, a brutal gang-rape is not an uncommon incident in inner-city Pascayne.

When she was first brought in Sybilla Frye hadn’t been ID’d yet. We didn’t know her name or address or who to contact. The EMTs couldn’t help us much. We were asking her questions but she kept pretending to be unconscious and unable to hear us when it was obvious that she was conscious and she was hearing us.

I was the ER physician on duty, Sunday morning October 7.

Right away I said to her, “Miss? Open your eyes, please.” Because
I had to examine her eyes. I had to determine if possibly she’d had a concussion or a skull fracture. I’d be ordering X-rays including X-rays of her skull. But still she wouldn’t open her eyes. She was so tense, you could feel her body quivering. Yet she refused to cooperate. She pretended to be unconscious the way a small child might pretend to be “asleep.” It isn’t easy to pretend you’re unconscious when you’re conscious. You might think it is, but it isn’t. I lifted one of her arms over her head and released it and immediately she deflected her arm to avoid striking her face—it’s a reflex you can’t help. Clearly, this girl who’d be identified as “Sybilla Frye” was conscious in the ER and in control of her reactions. I could see she’d been injured—that was legitimate—I felt sorry for her but this kind of uncooperative behavior would impede us in our treatment so I said, “Miss, you can hear me. So open your eyes”—and finally she did.

Looked at Dr. D_______, like she was terrified of
him.

Dr. D_______ is Asian, light-skin. Later it came out she was afraid of him, he’d looked “white” to her.

Of the EMTs, just one of us was “white”—“white Hispanic.” The others were dark-Hispanic, African-American. Yet, she’d acted scared of
us.

She was terrified! Just so scared . . .

She wasn’t hysterical but she was—she wasn’t—you had to concur she wasn’t in her right mind and under these circumstances you couldn’t blame her for not cooperating. She didn’t seem to understand where she was, or what was happening . . .

She understood exactly where she was, and exactly what was happening. She didn’t wish to cooperate, that’s all.

I did wonder why she wasn’t crying—most girls would’ve been crying by now. Most women.

We treated her for face wounds. Lacerations, black eyes, mashed nose, bloody lip. A couple of loosened teeth where he’d punched her.
(You could almost see the imprint of a man’s fist in her jaw. But he hadn’t strangled her, there were no red marks around her throat.) The blood wasn’t fresh but had coagulated in her nostrils, in her hair, etc. By their discolorations you could see that the bruises were at least twenty-four hours old. Also the blackened eyes. We gave her stitches for the deepest cuts in her eyebrow and on her upper lip. She reacted to the stitches and disinfectant so we had to hold her down but she still didn’t say any actual words only just
Noooo
. We wondered if she was, like, a Dominican who didn’t know English, or—there’s Nigerians in Pascayne—maybe she was Nigerian . . .

There were Hispanic nurses we called in, to try to talk to her in Spanish—she ignored them completely.