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An off-duty DC firefighter, wounded in a Capitol Hill robbery Saturday night, got no answer from DC911. He had to call his own firehouse to get help. Gary Dziekan, known as “Zeek”, is still carrying around the bullet that went through his chest and shoulder. It’s too dangerous to remove. Dziekan also is carrying frustration that he couldn’t reach 911.

Zeek was near 8th Street and C Street in Northeast, walking to his DC home from a friends house, when police say a teenager robbed him at gunpoint.

Mauricio Casillas, WRC-TV/NBC Washington:

Dziekan said the gunman asked for his phone. He handed it over, and as the gunman was asking him to unlock something on it, that’s when Dziekan said the gunman pointed the gun right at his chest. He said the barrel was right there. Dziekan said, In a split second decision, he decided to grab the barrel and move it away, and that’s when the gunman pulled the trigger.

“If I would have stood there, he was going to shoot me square in the chest, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Dziekan said.

Dziekan said he and the gunman were wrestling for the gun, so when the trigger was pulled, the bullet not only hit him, but also the gunman’s fingers. He said the gunman ran away, then came back. That’s what he said he sprung to action to protect himself.

“His gun was on the ground, so I picked it up, racked another round, shot at him a couple times because I really thought that he was coming back to kill me,” Dziekan said.

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Lianna Golden, WJLA-TV/ABC 7:

While processing the irony of his own shooter asking him for assistance, Dziekan waited three minutes and what felt like a lifetime with an open wound for 911 dispatchers with the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) to pick up his call.

“I was yelling for help. I had dialed 911 while my phone was sitting on the sidewalk on speaker as I’m taking my shirt off to start applying pressure to my wound,” he explained.

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Rather than continue to wait for 911 to pick up, Dziekan had a neighbor help him call the firehouse where he works. Firefighters immediately answered the phone at the quarters of Engine 18 and Truck 7 a few blocks away in the nearby Barracks Row neighborhood.

Dziekan told reporters on Sunday,”This is not the first time that long delays have been reported with OUC. I mean, accountability at OUC is not there. It’s sad that the Nation’s Capital has to deal with a 911 group that operates the way that they do.”