BENGHAZI, LIBYA - An alarm rang around 1 a.m. Wednesday, alerting emergency room doctor Ziad Bouzaid, 31, that an important patient was en route to Benghazi Medical Center.
Bouzaid, who was working a 24-hour shift, had already seen 10 Libyans come in that evening with various injuries, all saying they had been under attack. In a city inundated with armed militiamen vying for power, rumors were swirling in the emergency room about who was attacking whom.
This time, however, the Libyans who arrived were carrying American J. Christopher Stevens. He's a diplomat, someone said. As Bouzaid began attempting to resuscitate him, he looked at the man's face and recognized the popular U.S. ambassador immediately.
"I had seen photos of him on Facebook," Bouzaid said.
Stevens' lips were covered with a black substance and his body was "reeking of smoke."
"There was no sign of life. There was nothing," Bouzaid said.
Stevens was killed Tuesday along with three other Americans in an attack on their consulate compound in Benghazi, the birthplace of the revolution last year that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi. Stevens, who had been based in Benghazi throughout the revolt and became the ambassador to Libya in May, had traveled from Tripoli, where a unit of Marines protects the U.S. Embassy, to the less-guarded Benghazi consulate to open a Libyan-American cultural center, a Libyan legislator told a local television station.
The details of the attack on the consulate compound is still being sorted out. The FBI and CIA have dispatched agents to Libya to investigate.
