Why would a first responder refuse to help a baby? Paramedic Ann Marie Thomas has been fired for not helping an 8-month-old. The EMT was ordered four times to attend the scene but she refused -- and now that baby is dead.
When Thomas was first ordered to help a baby who had stopped breathing, she was parked less than a mile away, a two-minute drive. But six minutes passed before she responded to her supervisor that she was around the corner. She and her partner still didn't go in.
Even after her supervisor told her the baby was on an oxygen machine because she had been born premature, Thomas didn't go in.
"Romeo 33, Medic 51, be advised CPR is being performed on your scene," the dispatcher radioed again. "Romeo 33, Medic 51. CPR is being performed by the baby's mother."
Thomas responded, "I'm not about to be on no scene 10 minutes doing CPR, you know how these families get." Apparently Thomas was worried that the family would be hostile. She was assured only the mother was at home with the baby and she was not hostile.
Still, Thomas never showed up. The ambulance eventually arrived and took the baby to the hospital, but sadly the infant died the next day.
It's still perplexing -- why didn't Thomas get out of her SUV and help that baby? Even after hearing the baby was on a ventilator, alone with her mother, who was performing CPR? What about that scenario doesn't say "Emergency life-threatening situation"?!?
I don't know that we'll ever hear Thomas' side of the story. Something must have been going on with her, and I doubt it's as simple as "laziness." Maybe she'd answered too many calls to hostile households where she was impeded from her job, she was burned out, and she just lost it. But a mother fought hard to carry and deliver a baby, worked to keep that premature baby alive against the odds for eight months. Who knows what other problems the baby had and what her life expectation was. But it seems her life ended sooner than it should have.
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Do you think there should be criminal chargest against this paramedic?
Image via Click on Detroit