Police chief says error may have contributed to drowning death
By Jeremy Kohler
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
NORMANDY, Mo. — A Normandy Fire Protection District ambulance headed to a drowning got lost for several minutes Monday night - a mistake that set Normandy’s police chief on a media blitz criticizing the fire district’s “continued decline.”
Police Chief Douglas Lebert said the snafu might have contributed to the death of Barry Dorsey, 45, a Glen Echo Country Club maintenance worker who drowned in the swimming pool there during an employee picnic.
“It’s not the firemen, it’s the board that runs this fire district,” said Lebert. “They’re corrupting the district.”
Fire district officials returned fire Tuesday, decrying what they called “outright lies” about the drowning case. They said Lebert was simply attacking a board majority that has made major staffing changes since taking power in April.
While the ambulance went to a different club - nearby Norwood Hills - it had backup. Two paramedics on a Normandy fire district pumper responded to the drowning scene within five minutes, district officials said.
They gave Dorsey a shot of epinephrine, a form of adrenaline, and put a breathing tube down his throat, said Airest Wilson, a fire district deputy chief.
“If the ambulance would have arrived, they would have done the exact same thing,” said Wilson. “Bottom line is, was treatment delayed? No.”
At first, the district claimed that its driver hadn’t been lost at all.
A news release responding to Lebert’s comments said the district received a call for a “man down” at a country club on Lucas & Hunt Road - which could have meant Glen Echo or Norwood Hills - and sent crews to each place.
That put the blame on 911 dispatchers for providing a vague location.
But a recording of radio calls released Tuesday by North Central County Fire Alarm Systems set the record straight: The 911 dispatcher sent both the ambulance and pumper to the right address.
Several minutes after the call, the ambulance driver asked: “Is this Norwood Country Club or Glen Echo?” He then asked for directions to the club.
The ambulance, which left a minute or two before the pumper, probably would have arrived first. Whether that lapse harmed Dorsey is unknown.
Dorsey, described as a hard worker with an infectious laugh, dove into the pool and sank to the bottom, said Thom Johnson, the club’s general manager. Co-workers pulled him up and tried, in vain, to revive him.
Johnson said it was thought that Dorsey, who suffered from diabetes, might have suffered a seizure in the pool.
Normandy police officers responded first to the 911 call and tried to revive Dorsey.
Lebert, in an interview, said the fire district has replaced full-time personnel with part-time workers who aren’t familiar with the district.
One of those part-timers was on the wayward ambulance Monday, he said.
He said fire district employees have gotten lost before, most recently responding to a crash in Pasadena Hills that was just three blocks from their headquarters. Fire officials said Lebert was wrong. They accuse him of being sympathetic to the district’s former administration.
The Normandy fire district, which has headquarters in Pasadena Hills, protects 15 cities in north St. Louis County, as well as an unincorporated area. The district serves 45,000 residents.