By Eric Stirgus and Craig Schneider
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — The head of Atlanta’s 911 system said Tuesday that a dispatcher should not have called off Atlanta Fire Department paramedics sent to help a 16-year-old Mays High School student who died in October.
In a memorandum released Tuesday, 911 officials said they have changed procedures because of the incident. New guidelines allow only Atlanta Fire Department command officers and Grady Memorial Hospital EMS officials to cancel a response for firefighters or paramedics.
"[The fire department crew] should not have been canceled,” Miles Butler, director of the city’s 911 Communications Center, said in an interview Tuesday.
Butler said the dispatcher will not be disciplined as a result of the event.
The teenager, Antoine Williams, died as a result of injuries sustained during “mutual horseplay” with another student, according to an autopsy report released Tuesday. The Fulton County medical examiner ruled the death an accident.
In the memorandum, 911 officials said the incident did not delay medical treatment for Williams. “Was the gentleman receiving medical assistance? The answer is yes,” he said.
But the general manager of a private ambulance crew that was the first to respond to the school disputed that on Tuesday. Care Ambulance general manager Doug Wallace said valuable minutes were wasted when the fire department crew was called off before anyone even had a chance to examine the teen.
When he went into cardiac arrest, and they realized additional help was needed, it took three additional minutes to get the fire department crew back on the scene.
“There was a delay,” Wallace said.
The memorandum also said a new 911 computer system contributed to the confusion. The new system, unlike the system it replaced, allowed the fire department dispatcher to see police communications.
Butler said the fire department EMS crew was called back from the school after the dispatcher saw a message canceling calls for more police officers. The dispatcher thought the message was ordering him not to send the fire department crew to the school, so he canceled the call, Butler said.
“The dispatcher did what the screen told him to do,” Butler said. “Cancel.”
Butler said officials in his office, which has about 120 dispatchers, met shortly after Williams’ death to review their procedures and sent a report to the city’s Law Department. The report was received Tuesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the Georgia Open Records Act.
“We discussed how we can prevent it from happening again,” Butler said. “After what happened, [the dispatchers are] hard enough on themselves.”
Williams’ mother, Jena Barnett, said she could not comment on the autopsy report, or on the city’s change in its emergency response policy. Two attorneys representing the family were unavailable for comment Tuesday.
The autopsy ruled Williams’ death an accident. It said his death was caused by blood loss from a lacerated vein that receives blood from the head and neck. The vein was lacerated by a broken collar bone, the autopsy said. Classmates said Williams and another student were play-wrestling when their teacher briefly left the room. A teacher, Phyllis Caldwell, called 911 saying she thought Williams was having a seizure.
Barnett said she still looks out the front window of her two-story, brick-front southwest Atlanta home, looking for her son as the school bus drops off his classmates.
“I lost my son,” Barnett said in a brief interview inside her home Tuesday, where pictures of Williams adorn her living room and his bedroom. “I still have a lot of hurt and a lot of pain. I miss my boy.”
Williams wanted to attend Boston University to study international business. Atlanta Public Schools officials are also investigating the circumstances surrounding what happened to Williams at the school.
Staff writer Laura Diamond contributed to this article.