Sergeant stays by side of injured Idaho soldier

 

BOISE  -- Sgt. Jeannette Juroff first hid in a bathroom to stay out of the gunman's path.  Fearing it wasn't safe, she headed for another area. 

On her way, she found 18-year-old George Stratton lying on the floor in severe pain and shock.

"Everything else was second to George Stratton's life at that point," Sgt. Juroff of the Department of Army Human Resources said.
Juroff didn't know the young soldier. She just knew he needed help.

"I said, 'Hey kid, how are you doing?' And he was in and out. His neck looked like it was made out of Jell-O and his eyes were rolling back. He had this milky white color to his skin but he was pasty and his lips were the exact same color. There was no red on his lips,"  Juroff said.  

Her Army medical training kicked in; she put her vest under his head to keep it elevated and kept him talking. They discussed his family, his pool game, she even teased him for a laugh.   That's when gunfire broke out again.

“The people from the medical part of the building started hollering, ‘Take cover, take cover!’”

They were ordered to move the wounded to a safer area.  Juroff knew she couldn't pick Stratton up so the sergeant gave the young private a command.  "You better get the "F" up right now, get the "F" up. It scared him so much that the adrenaline started doing its job and he got up. He had his 10 seconds of his ability to make a sprint for it," Juroff said.

On their way to a safe building, they saw puddles of blood and dozens of other wounded soldiers.  She doesn't know how much time passed before EMTs arrived and put him on a gurney.

"I kissed him on his forehead and told him he was going to be OK. They took him out and I was very much relieved," she said. "I was very much lost in George Stratton because he was so worried. He had this little baby face with his whole life out there. He was scared." 

Asked why she helped Stratton instead of taking cover, she said you never leave a fallen comrade behind.  

"How do you leave somebody? How do you go on and have the conscious to be safe while so many people are in danger?" she said.

Juroff has not seen Stratton since that day but is happy to know he's out of the hospital and doing well. She says she's proud that a young soldier showed such bravery during a horrific time.  She was not injured but one member of her unit died, and another was severely injured.  

Stratton's family tells us he could be sent home to Post Falls to recover from his injury. He will not deploy with his unit next year.