Surprising developments in the NY EMT story.

[snagglepuss]

EMT Accused of Ignoring Dying Woman Sought Anonymity and the two EMT workers are a couple.

snip

according to a source who's heard a recording of the call, EMT Melisa Jackson was more concerned with covering her ass than getting help for pregnant 25-year-old Eutisha Revee Rennix. "Don't put my name in it!" Jackson allegedly told the dispatcher.

A source tells the Post Jackson was "blasé" and "laid back" during the call, which was placed eight minutes after she was first approached for help, while waiting for her bagels.


snip

Rennix's mother is now requesting that her daughter's body be exhumed...If the Medical Examiner determines that Rennix might have been saved if Jackson and her partner/boyfriend, Jason Green, had immediately aided her, prosecutors will try to charge both with reckless manslaughter, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.


http://gothamist.com/2009/12/24/emt_accused_of_ignoring_dying_woman.php

[niyad]

1. I figured when they were suspended that there was a lot more, and a lot uglier, to this story.

I have never in my life heard of emergency personnel acting like this.

[snagglepuss]

2. Nor have I. Do you remember absolutely heroic gesture of Wesley Autrey?

Tears come my eyes just thinking about his jumping onto the subway track to save a stranger. Autrey placed his life in harms way, in front of his children no less, to help someone he didn't know whereas these two louts couldn't move their butts to at least determine if they could help.

Autrey recounting what happened:

I had a split-second decision to make. Do I let the train run him over and hear my daughters screaming and see the blood? Or do I jump in?

...He landed between the track. Do I let the train run over this guy? I saw the ladies had my two daughters, so I hopped over on the tracks...

...I saw the two white lights and said "'Whoa, you ain't got no time.' I just grabbed him. I just dove on top of him and held him down because I knew there would be enough clearance for us...

...I was trying to pull him up, but his weight, he was fighting against me. He didn't know who I was. The only thing that popped into my mind was go into the gutter. So I dove in, I pinned him down, once the first car ran over us, then my thing was keep him still...

...He was fighting and pushing against me, so I laid on top of him. The train was probably 2 inches off my back...




http://gothamist.com/2007/01/03/details_about_t.php

[Zenlitened]

3. Tyra Hunter

'Her Life Didn't Count'

Washington's seminal bad-cop moment happened almost exactly seven years before the double murders of Stephanie Thomas and Ukea Davis — on the very same street corner where the teenagers met their deaths.

On the morning of Aug. 7, 1995, a car accident left 24-year-old passenger Tyra Hunter bleeding profusely on the corner of 50th and C. Hunter, who had been on her way to work as a hairdresser, was pulled out of the car by bystanders before firefighters and Emergency Medical Service workers arrived at the scene.

Eyewitness Catherine Poole told investigators that Hunter was conscious and "starting to complain of pain" when the rescuers arrived.

"(T)he ambulance person that was treating (Hunter) said to her that 'Everything is going to be all right, honey,'" Poole continued. "At that point, she started to urinate on herself. The ambulance person started to cut the pants legs on the jeans. ... (H)e started cutting up the leg and suddenly stopped, and jumped back when he found out that she was a man and said, 'This bitch ain't no girl ... it's a n----r, he's got a dick.'"

Two other witnesses corroborated the slur, and backed Poole's assertion that the emergency service workers and firefighters stopped treating Hunter for upwards of five minutes while "laughing and telling jokes" about her.

Two hours later, Hunter died of blunt trauma at D.C. General Hospital — after also being denied treatment by a doctor. No firefighters, emergency or hospital personnel were disciplined, and the city refused to take responsibility for the death, saying that Hunter was too seriously injured to survive.

But when Hunter's mother sued the city, a jury found that Hunter's civil rights had been violated at the accident scene, and that her death had likely been caused by medical negligence. (Experts testified that with proper treatment, she had an 86% chance of surviving.)

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. Read some of your state ems boards disciplianry decisions.

I reviewed a case for a lawyer where a paramedic left a 58 year old man complaining of crushing substernal chest pain on the side of the interstate with a flat. I had a cop call a tow truck to drive a drunk driver home so he didn't have to do a report this was after the drunk driver going the wrong way on an interstate offramp almost hit our engine. They are out there, they are burned out and they should find a different line of work.

[snagglepuss]

5. These are the kinds of stories one doesn't want to hear.

The paramedic sounds like a borderline sociopath. How could someone like that get to be a paramedic in the first place? I don't think burnout explains his callousness. The cop story sounds like burnout and yeah both need a different job.