John Lennon's Last Day and Death in New York City

it don't let it can't be dead four cops pulled john lennon out and put him into the back of a police car and his mouth he was bleeding from his mouth and he was terrible sight on the morning of december 8th 1980 john lennon did a photo shoot for rolling stone magazine with his wife yoko ono later that afternoon they departed their building where they were greeted by a fan who wanted their autograph lennon signed the copy of his most recent album double fantasy then john lennon and his wife came here to the record plant to record yoko ono's single walking on thin ice they spent most of the day and evening here just after 10 pm they got into a car and returned home it would be the final time john lennon would ever step foot inside a record studio they stepped out of the limousine and they went inside the gate there and then all of a sudden they heard five six shots and that was it when they returned back home later that night the same fan that asked john lennon for an autograph pulled out a gun and shot him in cold blood in the vestibule of his building mr chapman came up behind him and called to him mr lennon as he arrived at that doorway and then in a combat stance he fired he emptied the charter arms 38 caliber gun that he had with him and shot john lennon police responded to the scene right away when they saw the amount of blood coming from lennon's body they knew they could not wait for an ambulance they took him and put him in the back of a cop car and went directly to the hospital they also arrested the shooter mark david chapman on the scene well it was about 10 30 in the evening and we were parked my partner and i uh were parked at the corner of 72nd street and amsterdam avenue and we heard a uh a call come over the air of possible shots fired near the dakota we saw a few people standing around everybody kind of frozen my partner got out he ran to one side and i came around from the other side and some fellow was coming to me at the same time and he said to me officer be careful somebody's shooting a gun in there they're firing off shots and that's when i realized that we had the real thing happening we didn't see we didn't see lenin at that time and i said to jose the doorman who i knew i said jose what's going on here and and he pointed in the direction of this fellow with the overcoat on and he said he just shot lennon so i said to my partner steve i said steve stay with this guy put him up against you know put him up against the wall i went inside and i saw lennon lying face down on the rug and he was bleeding profusely i'll let out to steve steve we got a real shooting here better cuff that guy he actually uh was fairly polite i turned to him and i said you know you just threw your whole damn life away chapman started talking about a little person inside of him and a big person inside of him uh the big person has been winning the battle up to now but tonight the little person won the battle john lennon was brought to roosevelt hospital which is mount sinai hospital today hospital staff at the time were notified that they had a gunshot victim that needed immediate attention according to doctors john lennon was shot four times in the chest with three of the bullets exiting his back the first thing i remember that was a little out of the ordinary is uh they were they paged me overhead to the er which they usually don't do usually they would call your beeper you'd respond you know answer the beeper they give you the name or message whatever the other thing that was unusual he did not show up by ambulance he showed up by a police car he's in the back of a cop car he gets put on the stretcher wheeled down the hall he's wearing his brown leather jacket with a little for a collar he had blue jeans on track shoes and a and a red t-shirt with oriental print on it opened his chest and started giving internal cardiac massage the heart itself was intact um and the vessels above the heart were what were injured and we worked on them we didn't know who he was we're just working them and you get into a rhythm you start pumping the heart people doing their thing and someone starts going through these belongings and is at that point someone said you know his driver's license and i remember seeing a gold american express card that said john lennon and up before that someone said hey that looks like john lennon and i said no that's not john lennon you know it's like doubting thomas it couldn't possibly be johnlen and and then they brought out his stuff his id it is john lennon and that's when i had my omg moment after 30 minutes of trying to save his life doctors pronounce john lennon dead by that time the er director dr lynn had been called once they found out who it was john lennon was brought to the emergency room at the roosevelt site st luke's roosevelt hospital this evening shortly before 11 p.m i mean it affected me not the fact that i held his heart in my hands or operating but the fact that he died i think affected me more than anything else [Applause] [Music] for the next three days i couldn't listen to radio watch tv read a newspaper it was all john lennon and just reminding me of the few nights before and there's a lot of uh uh hindsight second guessing what if he wasn't so severely injured was there anything he could have done uh more uh i think everything was done correctly uh he was in i said gravely injured but it's still you still feel somewhat responsible you still it still gnaws at you you know where are certain moments in your life and i and i obviously have not forgotten this one yoko ono who was inside the hospital was given the sad news by doctors that her husband had passed away she was then placed in the back of a cop car and given a police escort where she returned home to the dakota but at that point word had gotten out that john lennon had passed away and the building was mobbed with fans from all over [Music] in 1985 yoko ono and then new york city mayor ed koch dedicated part of central park to john lennon's [Music] memory [Applause] ono who still lives in the dakota overlooks the area known as strawberry fields where she can see fans sing her husband's songs lay flowers and celebrate his memory [Music] there's no telling just what music the world has been deprived of with him not being here it would be nice to see what he would have done at 75 the fact that i'm doing any talking about this is even more impressive because since what we did was it really it's a fly speck of history we handled criminals every day but i do think uh that night that it was a night in history and i was a part of it your own spirit in a way is still alive in people's hearts you know and and the statements he made the music he made you know it's going around the world so in a way it's like he's alive you

Channel: Inside Edition

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Keywords: building, inside edition in-depth, cat-crime, new york city, central park, nypd, arrested, sal bono inside edition, mark david chapman, ed koch, dr. david halleran, sal bono, er, record plant, walking on thin ice, inside edition, celebrity, new york gritty, last day, gritty new york, the beatles, rolling stone, inside_edition, vestibule, double fantasy, shot, roosevelt hospital, shooting, yoko ono, upper west side, nyc, pete cullen, john lennon, assassination, john, dakota

Id: HQ68xik2pMo

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2017