LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Nearly one year after a mass shooting rocked Louisville to its core, the doctor who captured the nation's attention with his passionate pleas is reflecting on that tragic day.
Dr. Jason Smith made headlines at a news conference on April 11, 2023, a day after his trauma team at UofL Hospital performed emergency surgery on multiple victims of the Old National Bank shooting.
Smith, the Chief Medical Officer at UofL Health, made a statement, calling on policymakers to address gun violence.
“To everyone who helps make policy, both at state, city, [and] federal levels – I would simply ask you to do something. Because doing nothing -- which is what we’ve been doing -- is not working," Smith said at that news conference last year.
In a sit-down interview with WHAS11, Smith said there are still times when he thinks about the day of the shooting -- the pain and the rapid response by his team.
"You cry every once in a while, still to this day," he said. "It’s easier now than it was then. [But] it’s one of those things that I don’t think will ever leave you.”
Smith acknowledged that April 10, 2023 changed him, adding that it broke "that fallacy of safety that it can't happen to us."
"It can happen to anyone, but I think this was the first time that people felt it. They really felt it, thinking it could be them," Smith said. "It was a bank, it was a meeting, it was people they knew."
Smith also recounted the moments he pleaded for lawmakers to act, telling WHAS11 "the words that I said that day are just as true today as they were then."
"This is going on all over the place," he said. "Let's find a way to do something different. Let's find answers for these problems. That call to action hasn't changed."
Now, Smith tells us his team has been more active in meeting with legislators, and partnering with local organizations like the Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods to reduce gun violence.
"That's my part in preventing this from happening again," Smith said.
But through tragedy, there have been moments to celebrate, like when Louisville Metro Police Officer Nickolas Wilt -- shot in the head while bravely rushing to the scene that day -- was released from Frazier Rehab to go home in July 2023
"He was our last patient to leave the hospital," Smith said. "That's where you take your solace. That makes it worth it, to see the folks that we operated on that made it through that day back to their lives and back to working and enjoying their families. That's why we do what we do."
Smith believes the shooting has moved Kentucky lawmakers to talk across political lines more than ever before. However, he says he's not sure if they've "accomplished anything yet."
He called the legislative efforts so far "baby steps," but said at least folks are at the table saying they want to help.
There's a bipartisan bill in Frankfort that would make it easier to temporarily remove guns from people in crisis. But it hasn't seen any progress since the start of March, and has now run out of time to pass.
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