The city EMTs accused of ignoring a dying pregnant woman while they were buying breakfast in a Downtown Brooklyn cafe called the allegations against them "lies and fabrications." Queens residents Jason Green and Melissa Jackson — whose 30-day suspensions end today — said they did everything they could on the morning of Dec. 9, when Eutisha Revee Rennix collapsed in a backroom of an Au Bon Pain and later died of an asthma attack. Her unborn child also perished.
"You're telling me that at 9:13 in the morning somebody is going to drop dead in front of us, turn blue, and we're just going to sit there and say, 'We're drinking coffee and eating bagels, there's nothing we can do, we're trainees?'" said Green, a communications division operator. "You're telling me that we're going to just stand there and just go about our business?" In an interview with the Times, Jackson and Green said they never saw Rennix, and that even if they had, they didn't have the proper medical equipment to treat her.
Jackson, a radio dispatcher, told the paper that she and Green were taking a scheduled 40-minute break when a cafe employee asked her: "Do you know Eutisha?" Jackson said no, and the worker asked her to call an ambulance. Jackson says she called an internal line — so unlike other 911 calls her conversation might not have been recorded — and relayed information about Rennix's condition. "So I'm talking to the dispatcher now, telling him the information that [the employee] gave to me," Jackson said. "Then, as she's walking away, I said, 'Is that all? Is there anything else going wrong?' And she said, 'And she has asthma.' So I told the dispatcher. I said, 'Difficulty breathing; she has asthma.'" Jackson and Green said they had already left the eatery by the time the first ambulance arrived.
Though Jackson and Green return to work today, the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office might still press charges against them. The DA is currently "interviewing witnesses from the Au Bon Pain."
