‘Humiliated’ by the FDNY
Ambulance patient booze-vid shock
A Bronx resident says she was humiliated after learning that an FDNY EMT who urged her to guzzle booze in an ambulance mocked her in a video that was posted online.
“I was already intoxicated,” Faith Smith, 46, told The Post. “I was trying to tell him, ‘I don’t want no more.’ ”
The FDNY has accused Kyle Bossio, 27, a rookie emergency medical technician and aspiring FDNY firefighter, of filming Smith as he warned her to “finish all that liquor, or I will throw it out,” according to a caption on the video.
Bossio “resigned in lieu of termination” when confronted by FDNY investigators, according to a department spokesman.
“He was supposed to snatch it from me, but he convinced me to drink: ‘Hurry up, go — drink, drink, drink,’ ” Smith recalled. “I couldn’t understand what was going on.”
Smith, who has hired a lawyer, said she downed six mini-bottles of liquor in her bag during the ambulance ride to Lincoln Hospital.
“I didn’t know he was videotaping me all along,” she complained.
Smith says she called 911 because of “chest pains,” adding she suffers from asthma.
“I said, ‘I can’t breathe, give me some oxygen,’ but he didn’t do that,” Smith recalled. “He said ‘No, keep drinking.’ ”
Smith says she received no treatment until she got to the hospital.
Bossio allegedly shared the video on Snapchat, and a recipient posted a 36-second montage titled “FDNY EMT gives intoxicated patient more alcohol on the way to the ER” on YouTube, which soon yanked it.
Smith, a mother of three, said she learned about the video only after her mom read about it in The Post.
“What they did was the exact opposite of what they should have done,” her law- yer, Robert Greenstein, said of the EMT. “As a result, they put her life in jeopardy, invaded her privacy and publicly humiliated her.”
The FDNY said it showed Smith the video during the investigation, and will send her a formal letter, as federal law requires, informing her of the privacy breach.