The doctors at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital on Sunday morning knew what was coming before the ambulances arrived.

One of their colleagues, a resident in the emergency department, was inside the Grand Blanc Township Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when a man sped his pickup truck through the bricks and started shooting.

The emergency resident called to warn his fellow physicians of the mass shooting, which was soon followed by a fire that engulfed and destroyed the church on McCandlish Road.

The doctors alerted the hospital’s surgical and anesthesia teams. They prepared beds. And then they waited.

“All these patients just started rolling through the door, one after the other, with wounds you just never see in Grand Blanc, Michigan,” said Dr. Christopher Ash, a surgeon and director of surgical services at Henry Ford Genesys. “Bleeding. Little kids. It was really all hands on deck.”

The victims ranged in age from 6 years old to 78, law enforcement officials have said, after Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old Burton man and former U.S. Marine, allegedly rammed his pickup truck into the side of the church building and shot 10 people, two fatally, before setting fire to the building. Two bodies were later discovered in the church's rubble.

Sanford was later killed by police who arrived quickly on the scene.

Ash joined two other Henry Ford Genesys Hospital doctors — emergency medicine residency program director Alan Janssen and emergency physician Sanford Ross — at a Wednesday press conference to describe their experience treating the patients who were injured in the church attack.

There was the young boy who walked through the door, stoic and tearless, while his mother broke down. He would be OK despite his wound, Ross assured him. The boy has been released from the hospital, and the doctor didn't identify him by name.

There was the patient who died despite the hospital team’s extraordinary effort to save them, Ross said. The patient’s injuries were too great to survive, he said.

Ash said he later felt inclined to apologize for that patient’s death, for not having a miracle despite the medical team’s best efforts.

But on Sunday, the doctors’ mourning had to wait. More patients were coming.

Some of them were familiar. At least five hospital residents are devout Mormons who attend the church weekly, Ash said. Two of those residents were injured, as was the child of a resident.

“Their kids were there, and their wives were there, and some of them were physically there,” Ash said. “Some of them acted with heroics to pull people out of the fire…

“To see them go through this and their families go through this is heartbreaking. I have told a lot of people, words cannot describe the feeling. We really shouldn’t have to go through this in any community.”

In all, eight people injured by the attack were treated at Henry Ford Genesys, Henry Ford Health spokeswoman Lauren Zakalik said. Five were treated for gunshot injuries and three for smoke inhalation, Zakalik said, while three remain hospitalized. The others were released, she said.

Those are just the physical injuries, Ash cautioned. The emotional and psychological injuries sustained by the children who were shielded from gunshots and raced through the doors will be vast and likely last their entire lives, he said.

And all of the injuries are unnecessary, Ash said.

“These types of things happen because we hate,” Ash said. “We don’t need to hate anymore. That would be my message to everybody. Stop. There’s no reason for it.”

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