Two Illinois Paramedics Charged With Murder in Patient’s Death

Two Springfield, Ill., paramedics have been charged with murder after the death last month of a man who was suffering from alcohol withdrawal, the authorities said.

Early on the morning of Dec. 18, three police officers responded to a report of several armed people inside a residence, the Springfield Police Department said in a news release on Tuesday.

The officers “quickly realized” that the man who made the emergency call needed medical help, the police said. Another person in the house indicated that the man, who was not publicly identified, was “suffering from hallucinations” related to alcohol withdrawal, the police said.

Emergency medical personnel who arrived about 15 minutes later “acted indifferently to the patient’s condition,” the police said.

Body camera footage released by Sangamon County shows a paramedic, identified by her lawyer as Peggy Finley, repeatedly shouting at the patient, who is on a bed, to sit up. She then says that he should get up and walk to the ambulance.

“I am not playing with you now,” Ms. Finley says. “You’re going to have to walk because we ain’t carrying you.”

The footage shows police officers trying to heave the man, who is struggling and appears to be panting, up to his feet. He briefly stands before collapsing.

“It is clear based on the officers’ body-worn camera footage that the patient was not able to walk and the medical personnel were not offering any assistance,” the police said.

“I can’t,” the man says, as officers again pull him to his feet. Eventually, after he falls at least two more times, the officers slowly help him walk outside the house to a waiting stretcher, the footage shows.

Ms. Finley then instructs the man, who appears to be kneeling on the ground and slumped over the stretcher, to get on it, the footage shows.

The videos do not show clearly whether the paramedics placed him on the stretcher. Footage instead cuts to their strapping him into the stretcher before the videos end. The patient died after arriving at the hospital, the police said.

He died of “compressional and positional asphyxia due to prone facedown restraint on a paramedic transportation cot/stretcher by tightened straps across back and lower body in the setting of lethargy and underlying chronic alcoholism,” according to a coroner’s report obtained by CNN.

Alcohol withdrawal symptoms, including anxiety, hallucinations and agitation, can occur several hours after a person has last had a drink, according to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

Ms. Finley and her colleague, Peter Cadigan, were being held in the Sangamon County Detention Facility on $1 million bonds, W. Scott Hanken, Ms. Finley’s lawyer, said. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Cadigan had a lawyer.

Mr. Hanken said that Ms. Finley was an employee of Lifestar Ambulance Service. A company representative for Lifestar could not be reached on Sunday.

Mr. Hanken said that Ms. Finley’s behavior, which he described as “either indifference” or “her lack of bedside manner,” did not cause the patient’s death.

“In this case, it clearly is a red herring, and it’s the first thing people want to point to,” Mr. Hanken said. “But having a bad attitude,” he said, was not a crime.

Dan Wright, the Sangamon County state’s attorney, could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Thursday, court records show. Master Sgt. Delila Garcia, a spokeswoman for the Illinois State Police, which is conducting an independent investigation, declined to comment.

The Springfield Police Department said its officers followed procedure in their handling of the call.

“The officers, who are not emergency medical professionals, are not trained nor equipped to provide the necessary medical treatment or to transport patients in this type of situation,” the department said. “The officers turned over care of the patient to the licensed, medical professionals at the scene in accordance with Springfield Police Department policy.”