Lawsuit Seeks $1M After Ambulance Crew Misses Crash Victim
FLINT (WWJ/AP) - A lawsuit seeks $1 million after an ambulance crew that responded first to a July car crash in Flint failed to notice a man in the car who later was discovered to be dead.
The lawsuit was filed in Genesee County Circuit Court on behalf of the estate of 28-year-old Cortez Lionel Cheathams. It claims that employees of Mobile Medical Response showed gross negligence by failing to see him.
MMR spokeswoman Lynn Schutter declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed last month.
Emergency calls began shortly after 4 a.m., when residents dialed 911 to report a car had hit a tree. Police said they were tied up at a homicide investigation and a separate shooting, so dispatch sent an ambulance. The ambulance crew reported that no one was in the car and the incident was then downgraded to a less-serious call of a single-car property damage accident involving a damaged vehicle.
The 911 calls continued to come in and at 5:39 a.m., dispatch sent out a second ambulance crew to the scene. Those workers found Cheathams dead in the driver's seat of his vehicle.
Police eventually arrived at the crash scene, an hour and 55 minutes after the first 911 call was made.
Following the crash, Schutter said she didn't know whether any of the emergency medical technicians got out of the initial ambulance to check inside of the crashed car. She added that ambulance crews respond to crash scenes to be of service to victims, not to investigate or act as police.
Police Chief James Tolbert said it's not know if Cheathams could have been alive when the first ambulance responded.
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