E&P: First Doctor to Treat Cheney Victim ... Wanted to Send Him Home

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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001996547

First Doctor to Treat Cheney Victim Tells Texas Paper He Wanted to Send Him Home

By Joe Strupp
Published: February 14, 2006 12:05 PM ET

NEW YORK While news reports from The New York Times to the Austin American-Statesman have been describing the injuries to Harry Whittington, the victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting, as more serious than first believed, as he remains hospitalized today, the tiny Alice (Texas) Echo-News Journal will offer a different version later today, E&P has learned.

According to the afternoon daily, located about 60 miles from the shooting site, the first doctor to treat Whittington immediately after the Saturday shooting contended that his wounds were superficial and not in need of further hospitalization.

"If it were just a normal citizen, he would have sent him home with antibiotics," said Ofelia Hunter, Echo-News Journal editor, who talked to the doctor. "He felt that it was more royal treatment that he was getting."

.. ."He felt he was transferred because of his prominence, and that he was already stable," Hunter said. "It was more because of who he was." That is in marked contrast to reports in most major newspapers that Whittington required intensive care treatment, was hit with more than 100 pellets, and that some of the wounds were so severe the pellets could not be removed.