Murrysville Medic One’s dive team spent Monday afternoon searching for something rather unique: fingers.
The team was requested by Allegheny County officials to respond to the Jefferson Hills area following a swimming accident in which a swimmer had four fingers severed.
“It had something to do with a rope swing, but I’m not sure of the exact circumstances,” Medic One Director Darrick Gerano said.
After being briefed by Jefferson Hills police and fire personnel, “three divers were deployed into the water and, after a short search, located the missing fingers in approximately nine feet of water,” according to Medic One’s Facebook page.
Gerano said it didn’t take long at all to find the missing digits.
“We found the fingers within the first 15 or 20 minutes,” he said. “After we surfaced, we mentioned to the fire chief that there were a lot of hazards in the water, like some deep under-cuts. There’s a pretty straight (vertical) cliff where the rope swing was, but there were under-cuts, a lot of jagged rocks and things like that.”
The fingers were packaged and taken by ambulance to surgeons waiting at a local trauma center, Gerano said.
