Pubdate: Fri, 30 Nov 2012
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2012 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Andrew Pantazi
Page: Front page

FATAL OVERDOSE CALL DISREGARDED

2nd 911 Call From Complex Judged to Be Same Case

Matthew Sanchez had been popping Xanax pills for hours and was fading
fast. When he finally collapsed to the floor of his Far North Dallas
apartment during the early morning hours of Nov. 16, a friend dialed
911 for him and disappeared.

At the time of the call, Dallas Fire-Rescue paramedics were already
working an emergency at the same apartment complex that had been
phoned in only 11 minutes earlier. Emergency responders thought the
calls were the same because of miscommunication so they did not
respond to Sanchez's apartment while saving the first caller.

Six hours later, relatives of the 20-year-old Sanchez found him dead
in his apartment. The last number dialed on his phone was 911.

"My baby brother's dead because of their mistake," Samuel Sanchez said
this week before referencing another mishandled Dallas 911 call in
August that ended with a woman murdered. That incident led to the
disciplining and resignation this week of a 911 call taker.

"How many dead bodies does a city need before they will
change?"

But Lt. Joel Lavender, a Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman, says responders
did follow proper procedures when emergency workers verified that
there was only one call by asking the original patient if the number
from the second call belonged to the first patient.

The patient erroneously confirmed the number, but the patient was
asked about the second call while being rushed to the hospital for an
undisclosed medical condition. The patient's mental state is unclear,
because the fire department is not answering questions that may
violate the patient's right to privacy. City officials have said the
nature of the two calls was "similar."

"With the information we had at that time," Lavender said, "we assumed
the one incident was the same."

Dallas Fire-Rescue is conducting an internal investigation into the
incident.

When asked what went wrong and what rescue personnel may have done
differently, Lavender said, "Once it's verified, what else could we
have done?"

One public safety expert said rescue personnel have a duty to make
sure all 911 calls are properly handled.

"If there is any - repeat, any - ambiguity about a possible second
call, yes, common sense says that they have a responsibility to
clarify the situation immediately," said policing-policy expert Samuel
Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha. "After all, this is fire and rescue, dealing with
emergencies, not FedEx delivering packages."

Calls 11 minutes apart

Matthew Sanchez moved to Dallas from Harlingen two years ago on the
heels of another family tragedy, relatives say. His older brother,
Aaron Cruz, died in a car accident and Sanchez, who struggled with the
death, moved here to live with his stepbrother, Samuel Sanchez.

"He loved living here," Samuel Sanchez said by phone Monday. "He loved
the city. He loved everything they had to offer."

Matthew, like Samuel, was openly gay. In Harlingen, Samuel says, the
brothers felt they could never be their true selves. Here, Matthew was
able to find a welcoming place in the gay community, his brother said.

"He had a large personality," Samuel Sanchez said. "When he walked
into the room, everyone knew it. He loved to have fun. He loved to
have a good time. He really enjoyed life."

Matthew called his 2-yearold niece every week and spoke to his mom
daily. Often the conversation was about Aaron's accident.

The night Matthew overdosed, Samuel Sanchez was at a hotel visiting
his biological brother. Matthew had called a new friend, Samuel Kim,
to hang out at his Bear Creek apartment. Kim says that he was smoking
marijuana and that Matthew was swallowing Xanax pills.

At 2:44 a.m., paramedics responded to a call for medical assistance
from a different apartment at the same complex on Bent Tree Forest
Circle. On the way to the hospital with that patient, 911 received a
call at 2:55 a.m. from someone who said his friend had overdosed on
drugs.

A Dallas Fire-Rescue dispatcher, who thought the call might be related
to the earlier call, told paramedics to ask if it was their patient's
phone number. The patient said that it was, even though the patient
had previously called from a different cell number.

The dispatcher then told police who were en route to the second call
that there was only one incident. So they went to the apartment of the
first caller instead - city officials said to secure the unit -
unaware that Sanchez was dying in a nearby apartment.

At 9 a.m., Diane Sanchez walked into her son's apartment and
discovered his body.

Lavender, the fire department's only spokesman for the Sanchez
incident, refused to answer several questions about it this week,
stating that many issues were protected by federal health privacy laws.

But he did say paramedics took the right steps to confirm that both
911 calls were for the same incident. To verify an incident, Lavender
said, "we can use apartment, business name, phone numbers, suite
numbers and we also give the person on the other end an opportunity to
correct any information that may have been misunderstood."

In this situation, Lavender said, "We used the cellphone number as a
verifying agent."

When asked if the fact that the second call had a different apartment
number should have been enough for paramedics to check that apartment,
he replied, "to the uninformed, maybe."

Kim said he was never asked by the 911 call taker whether his call was
related to the earlier one.

Retired Dallas Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Joe Kay supervised 911
operations for five years. He said that with the limited resources of
the department, dispatchers have to make sure they aren't wasting time
sending responders to various calls if they're all about the same incident.

"Unfortunately, we don't have enough ambulances to cover everything,"
he said. "It's a judgment call. ... If you got a question, then you
send somebody on scene and you let that person make the decision."

As far as trusting the patient who falsely claimed Matthew Sanchez's
phone number, Kay said, "You don't always get the true picture when
you're talking to civilians on the scene."

Caller left scene

After he dialed 911, Kim said, he drove away in Sanchez's Chevrolet
Tahoe. He said later that he fled because he believed there were
warrants out for his arrest and he was afraid of interacting with police.

"I feel really guilty that I didn't stay," Kim said. "For selfish
reasons, I left. If I had just stayed there for a couple more minutes
and called the police again; I mean, maybe ..."

The Sanchez incident was at least the third time since the summer that
a Dallas 911 call has been called into question.

Just after midnight on July 4, an east Oak Cliff home burned to the
ground while seven callers unsuccessfully tried to reach emergency
operators. Firefighters eventually responded nine minutes after the
initial call, but the house had already been destroyed. There were no
injuries.

In August, Deanna Cook, 32, was strangled while on the line with a 911
operator, who failed to relay critical information about the fatal
attack to police. Cook's body was found two days later by relatives.
Cook's ex-husband is charged in her death. The 911 operator who
mishandled the call was given a 10-day suspension and this week, she
resigned.

The family of Matthew Sanchez says they want to make sure that what
happened to him and the others doesn't happen to anyone else. When 911
is called, Samuel Sanchez said, someone should come.

"Yes, he overdosed, and yes, that was probably not the best
situation," Samuel Sanchez said of his brother. "But that's what
Fire-Rescue is for. That's what 911 is for."
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