Jolene Waldref.Photo:GoFundMe
GoFundMe
An ambulance crew is being criticized for their response to a woman’s call for help in Milwaukee before she died in sub-freezing temperatures last month.
Shannon Burns Eckert, who started aGoFundMe campaignfollowing the incident, said Waldref “had finished work” when she “slipped on some ice and fell face forward into the snow.”
Neither Curtis Ambulance nor the Milwaukee Medical Examiner immediately responded to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
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However, Curtis Ambulance’s vice president of operations Dan Robakowski admitted the ambulance crew did not exit their vehicle to search for the woman.
“Our best guess is that the crew was unable to see anybody that was in that sidewalk or fence area,” Robakowski added.
By this time, Waldref had already “gone unconscious,” Eckert said.
Borkowski, who also chairs the Ambulance Service Board said he particularly “took issue” with statements suggesting crews could not search every snowbank for the woman. “What does it take to get out and look around?” he added.
“We felt that they did their due diligence,” he explained. “They didn’t do anything wrong. The EMS system here worked as designed.”
Baker also said it was difficult for crews to locate Waldref because the woman was not standing upright and was not at the bus stop.
As of midday Friday, more than $22,000 had been raised via the GoFundMe campaign for Waldref’s funeral and her daughters. Her eldest daughter, who is 21, “will be taking guardianship over” her 14-year-old sister, Eckert said.
“These kids have had to grow up much too fast,” Eckert added, noting that their father died six months before their mother.
source: people.com
