Baltimore attack made worse by 911 response
Weeks before the one-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray, I was upset by an incident that occurred outside of my Canton home, but horrified to see the response by emergency services after 911 was called.
At 2:30 a.m., after bars had closed, it’s not uncommon to hear commotion outside. On this particular night, I was awakened by yelling and the sound of a motor bike. After a few minutes, these noises subsided, and I heard someone say, “He’s not breathing.” I ran outside to find a semiconscious young man lying on the ground, with two companions, and my neighbors who had called 911.
While waiting for emergency services to arrive, I learned that the injured man had been attacked and robbed in that spot. A group of young men surrounded him, one on a motor scooter, beat him and took his money. It was described that they had “stamped his head into the ground,” which is concrete pavement. His companions noted that he’d lost consciousness, and they actually started CPR due to concern that he wasn’t breathing. Based on this victim’s loss of consciousness and the described beating, I was concerned about possible skull, brain, and cervical-spine injury, which could be exacerbated with movement. I put a pillow under his head, and attempted to hold his head and neck in line, and keep him from moving.
After several minutes, a police car arrived. We told the officer that he needed an ambulance, and witnesses described what had happened. Several minutes later, a Baltimore City Fire Department van arrived. We reported the events, including his loss of consciousness (he was still only semiconscious), the concern for failure to breathe and the mechanism of injuries. As a physician, I realized that in order to avoid further potential injury, he needed to be moved properly. This entails placing a c-spine collar and having two to three people with very basic EMS training paying attention to keeping him straight, and transferring him to a board on which he’d be lying flat with little mobility.
Instead, people from the van brought out a plain sheet, rolled him onto it without any attention to his positioning or movement, and carried him as if he were contents of a hobo sack. They placed him on a gurney with the head of the bed elevated at approximately 60 degrees and clumsily transferred the gurney into the van without attention to his positioning, nor to the sharp bumps that came with maneuvering the gurney into the van. I protested and asked why he wasn’t put on a board with a collar. They ignored meuntil I told them that I was an intensive care unit physician. They said he’d be assessed in the van to see if he needed a collar (after this traumatic manipulation) and that they don’t have the same resources and equipment as “the county.” So they were comfortable causing additional and potentially paralyzing injuries to this victim?
I was then told that this semiconscious crime victim with witnessed head trauma was refusing to go to the hospital because he doesn’t have insurance, and that they couldn’t force him to go; they’d drive him home instead. In disgust, I stated that he could have a subdural bleed, and if they dropped him off at home, he could be dead by morning. They allegedly took him to an emergency room. The policeman who had initially arrived at the scene was still there and told us that the attackers hadn’t been caught.
The criminal activity that took place outside of my home was disturbing, but anticipated when one lives in a city. The responses, however, were quite upsetting. I’m not sure whether the policeman who arrived on the scene was supposed to have engaged in the attempt to find the offenders, but he did not appear to — he just reported that they hadn’t been caught. I do know how anyone should deal with an injured person who has potential neurological/spinal injury. Any responder to a call for an ambulance should have the basic equipment and training to perform in a way that would avoid additional injuries. This would have been possible in this situation if there had been a tiny bit of investment in listening and thinking about the situation.
It was extremely sad to learn ofthe mistreatment of Freddie Gray, a young man suspected of crime by Baltimore City. It is equally sad to witness similar mistreatmentof a crime victim a year later in the same city. Haven’t we learned anything?