'Don't lift me,' pleaded Kennedy

LOS ANGELES, June 5, 1968 (UPI) -- Max Behrman, an ambulance attendant who accompanied Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to Central Receiving Hospital, said that when he arrived at the hotel Kennedy was on the floor, his wife sitting beside him, rubbing ice on his forehead.

"I knelt down but she fought me away-she wouldn't let me touch him," Behrman said.

"I said, 'what do you want an ambulance for then?'

"She said, 'I want to get him to a hospital.'

"I said that was what I was there for.

"We got him on a stretcher but as we did, he said, 'Please don't! Please don't lift me.'

"We got him down to the ambulance, but on the way Mrs. Kennedy kept pulling on the stretcher, saying she didn't want it going too fast -- that we were hurting him," Behrman said.

"We got him into the ambulance. I wanted a little information for my book. She took it out of my hand and threw it into the lot.

"From what I could see, he needed a bandage on his head -- at the right ear where one wound was. And I had to give him oxygen which he needed very badly."