Doc opens up about murdered John Lennon’s final moments

LONDON - A doctor who struggled to revive John Lennon after he was shot has revealed in a documentary how he held the ex-Beatle’s heart in his hand as he tried to bring him back to life.

Steven Lynn’s dramatic account of the night of Lennon’s death on Dec 8, 1980, comes as part of an extraordinary documentary in which the singer’s killer, Mark Chapman, claims that he has finally conquered the psychological demons that drove him to fire the fatal bullet, reports the Daily Mail.

‘Losing Lennon: Countdown to Murder’, airing on CNN this weekend, examines Chapman’s mental struggles prior to the assassination and provides new insight from some of the central characters in the musician’s life and death, including his second wife, Yoko Ono, first son Julian, and Chapman’s wife.

Lynn, director of emergency services at New York’s Roosevelt Hospital that night, recounts how he suddenly found himself commanding the race to save Lennon after a police officer staggered through the doors carrying his bleeding body.

Lennon had been shot four times, one of the bullets rupturing his aorta.

“Two police officers came around the corner, one with the body on his shoulder. He was holding him, just like a fireman’s hold, and the other one yelled: ‘Gunshot wound, no vital signs’,” Lynn told CNN.

“He was lifeless, he had no pulse, no blood pressure, he was unresponsive,” he said.

Desperate to do what he could, despite the odds being apparently stacked against success, he opened up Lennon’s chest, closed his hand around his non-beating heart and attempted to massage it back to life. As fast as new blood was being pumped into his body, he says, it was simply pouring back out.

“After trying for about ten, 15, 20 minutes, it was clear that nothing could be done and John Lennon was pronounced dead,” Lynn said.

Ono, who had seen her husband gunned down and was waiting for news in a hospital side-room, melted down and tried to harm herself as the doctor broke it to her that there was nothing more he could do.

“I probably said something like, ‘I have very bad news. In spite of all of our efforts to save your husband, we were unable to and he died,”‘ the doctor said in the film.

“She was literally lying on the concrete floor of our emergency department hitting her head against the wall. I put my hands behind her head, fearful that she was going to hurt herself,” he added. (ANI)