Tragic death

I am not sure people realize what a toll some calls take on the emergency personnel that have to deal with them. They think it just affected the ones that are related to the call. WRONG!  Even in dispatch you listen to the call and your heart bleeds for them. Now officers type their own reports on the computer but in those days you had to type every yucky detail and I mean down to the most minor detail of the call. You think some crime books or movies are bad, try reading a real police report on an incident or being there in the ambulance or police officer. It breaks your heart for years. It is not something you can go home and tell your spouse about either. Just to sick to want them to know.  I am going to tell a story about such a call but I am going to leave out 90% of the really sick stuff for the same reason I just mentioned.  I just want people to get a feel for what it is like truthfully. I hate that the lawyers play games in court and decide what a jury should hear. They say it is to emotional to show that picture, well the case was emotional and the jury needs to see it.

Anyway, one early am call when you are doing your best to stay awake and watching the clock count the hours and minutes until your relief gets there and hopefully you can sleep  during the day to come back that next night...Oh blessed sleep  how I miss you.....911 WAKE UP...."911 please st." and you hear a screaming voice say "my baby isn't breathing". An emergency services nightmare is about to begin.  With one hand you start asking her questions "do you know CPR" and the other hand is poking buttons like mad to get the ambulance enroute and the officers started.  The caller is yelling "no, help me, God help me she is blue"  You start giving her instructions to do CPR and stopping for a second to give the ambulance crew the address. You tell her how to start breaths and she yells "I can't she is cold and stiff", you relay the info to the responding crews......

Dead on arrival....a sad way to end your shift.  How do you go home now and go to sleep....You think of your own kids at home sleeping in their beds, your fears always think of your kids and hope they are ok and breathing when you get there. It takes all your will power not to call home and wake up the whole family just to hear their voices and know they are ok.  You continue your shift.

You come back to work the next day....(our troopers used to record the reports on cassette for the Dictaphone for you to type) and their in your work basket is the cassette on the call the night before. Oh great, now come all the little dirty details of how they died. You put the tape in the Dictaphone and hope against hope it was a natural death and this was not going to ruin your whole day as soon as you get to work. No such luck, it is not a natural death.

In as little details as I can and still get the point across. They had a drinking party at the house that fateful night and everyone was drunk as can be.  The baby 8 months old was laying on the couch with a blanket and her drunk uncle went over and sat on her.  He was so drunk he did not know it and did not feel her struggle to get a breath but they found bits of his jeans and skin under her little fingernails as she struggled......I will leave the story with only those details.  His defense in court  "he was drunk" "he was sorry" "he was sad and destroyed"
and her family "he did not mean too, it has destroyed our family but it was a tragic accident" He got a manslaughter charge and probation.

I think it was murder by neglect!!!!

Alcohol destroys so much!  It is the most misused drug in our society and the most accepted drug in our society. You would be amazed at how many of calls alcohol is involved in.

Don't drink and drive but don't let your kids at a drunken party either. This was over 30 years ago and I can remember this case.  The family and all responders that had to deal with this case remember it.

A little girl no longer walks with us because of a night of fun, took a life of laughter