They may have, although I don't think so. But in any event it would not help. Might make the damage worse. That's not your laser pointer. The beam carries lots of momentum, It kills not so much by absorption of the energy in the beam, but rather by momentum transfer, just like a really hot bullet.
It’s interesting to know lasers can do that at relatively short ranges - I know there are concepts such as Solar Sails which use the principle of momentum transfer of photons to achieve high velocities, but that takes huge distances and times to achieve the acceleration.
Any literature on momentum transfer through lasers would be greatly appreciated.