Detroit EMT fired after refusing to tend to baby girl who was struggling to breathe
Detroit EMT fired after refusing to tend to baby girl who was struggling to breathe
A Detroit EMT has been fired after she flatly refused to help a premature baby suffering a medical emergency who later died.
Ann Marie Thomas from Detroit, Michigan, received a frantic call on May 30 that an eight-month-old girl had stopped breathing.
But after she arrived near the scene she coldly refused to save the dying tot, despite the fact that she was less than a mile away from the family’s house on the west side of the city.
Instead, she parked her emergency vehicle around the corner from the house where the baby, Anaya Wright-Trussell lay struggling to breathe.
According to WDIV-TV she waited a further six minutes before contacting dispatchers and explaining that she did not want to enter the home because she feared how the family would react to her.
Authorities have not made clear why Thomas hesitated in entering the home and treating the child.
Her decision left a dispatcher exasperated as he pleaded with her to help the baby who was just two minutes away during a call that has been released to the public.
‘I’m going to need you to make that scene,’ the Detroit Fire EMS supervisor told Thomas. ‘You’re going to have to make patient contact.’
Thomas responded: ‘I’m not about to be on no scene 10 minutes doing CPR, you know how these families get.’
The dispatcher responds: ‘Uh, Romeo 33? Updated information that the child is not breathing. The baby was hooked up to an oxygen machine because it was premature. Romeo 33?’
Even after hearing that, Thomas and her partner refused to budge, according to WDIV-TV. She apparently wanted to wait for another crew to arrive.
The tot, who was born premature, relied on an oxygen machine.
The baby’s distraught mother Janee Wright-Trussell said that she was shouting for help as she could see her baby needed urgent care.
She told WDIV-TV: ‘My daughter would have been here if she just came around that corner and responded to my cry for help.’
The dispatcher tells Thomas: ‘Romeo 33, Medic 51, be advised CPR is being performed on your scene. Romeo 33, Medic 51. CPR is being performed by the baby’s mother.’
The little girl was eventually taken to Sinai-Grace Hospital by a different ambulance, but died the next morning.
Thomas and her partner were in a SUV which had all of the equipment that an ambulance has. It was designed to help medics get to patients much faster than normal. But it did not help.
