Court documents say that two paramedics in Illinois are being charged with murder because a patient died of positional asphyxiation shortly after being taken to the hospital in December.
Peggy Finley, 44, and Peter Cadigan, 50, went to a home in Springfield on December 18 after police asked for medical help for a 911 caller who “was having hallucinations due to alcohol withdrawal,” according to a news release from the Springfield Police Department.
Body camera footage released by the police shows Finley going into the back bedroom of the house while one of the officers tells her about Earl L. Moore, Jr.
Finley can be heard yelling at Moore to get up and walk out to the ambulance. “You’ll have to walk because we’re not going to carry you!” She Tells. “Really, I’m not in the mood for this stupid stuff.”
Two of the officers can be seen helping Moore get outside and onto the gurney. Cadigan helps Moore get into a prone position on the stretcher, and both paramedics strap him in.
“The Springfield Police Department was later told that the patient had died after getting to the hospital,” says a news release from the police department.
Moore died of “compressional and positional asphyxia due to prone facedown restraint on a paramedic transportation cot/stretcher by tightened straps across the back and lower body in the setting of lethargy and underlying chronic alcoholism,” according to the coroner’s autopsy report.
Court records show that Finley and Cadigan were arrested on January 9 and charged with murder in the first degree.
They are being kept in jail in Sangamon County on a $1 million bond each.
On January 19, both of them are due back in court.
Cnn has tried to get a comment from Finley and Cadigan’s lawyer, but hasn’t heard back yet.
According to the National Institutes of Health, alcohol withdrawal is a medical problem that happens when a person who is used to drinking alcohol regularly cuts down on it or stops drinking it all together.
The agency says that the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal are very different for each person who is going through them. They can range from insomnia, anxiety, or irritability in mild cases to delirium tremens, seizures, or hallucinations in severe cases.
Lifestar Ambulance Service, which hired the paramedics, wouldn’t say anything about the case because an investigation is still going on.
Cnn has also tried to get in touch with the county’s executive chairperson for the Office of Emergency Management about its contracts for ambulance services but hasn’t heard back yet.
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