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Family of man mistakenly declared dead still distraught
Kailey Tracy reports
CLEARWATER, Fla. - A report from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office describes the minutes after medics declared a man dead, and a deputy and sergeant noticed he was still alive.
Those two Clearwater Fire & Rescue medics have been on administrative duty since the incident in February, and the incident is under investigation. The family of Thomas Maxwell said while they’re grateful their loved one is still here, the trauma from the incident continues.
"I wake up in the middle of the night to check on my dad because I’m scared he’s going to be gone," Phebe Maxwell, Thomas Maxwell’s daughter, said through tears.
RELATED: 'He's not dead': Clearwater medics on administrative duty for declaring man who was breathing dead
Phebe said since that February morning when she and her mom found her father lying on the floor of his bedroom unresponsive, she hasn’t been able to sleep well.
"That broke me in a way that I don’t know if it’s going to mend," she said.
Phebe performed CPR and her mom called 911. Phebe said the two Clearwater Fire & Rescue medics who responded, though, barely even checked her dad’s pulse before declaring him dead. She said one also told her to stop CPR.
"I’m like, ‘why? He’s breathing.’ He’s like, ‘ma’am, he’s gone," Phebe said.
The report from PCSO said when a deputy got to the scene, one of the medics told her 66-year-old Thomas Maxwell’s time of death, some other information that’s redacted from the report and left.
"It’s so hard for me to even hear that, time of death," Phebe said.
The deputy wrote in the report that she and a sergeant walked into Maxwell’s room, pulled back the white sheet and heard him gasp for air. The deputy said she told the sergeant one of the medics said Maxwell would have short gasps for air, Agonal breathing, signaling someone is near death.
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Previous: Medics under investigation for declaring living man dead
Paramedics pronounced a Clearwater man dead after he suffered a cardiac arrest, but a Pinellas County deputy noticed he was still breathing and called for backup.
The report says, however, Maxwell continued to have bursts of short breaths, which the sergeant found to be odd. They both felt a faint pulse and called for medical crews to return and a different crew responded.
"If that deputy wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve been my dad leaving here in a body bag," Phebe said.
Maxwell was in the hospital for nearly a week, and spent some of that time in the ICU. While he’s home now, Phebe said her dad is having an extremely hard time remembering things, and their medical bills are stacking up.
Phebe said she’d like to see the two medics fired, but thinks that may be out of spite.
"I would like to talk to them. If they're sorry and not just sorry because you got caught, but sorry because you know that you could have done more … You can't just teach empathy. Unfortunately, you can fake it, but that EMT didn’t even fake it. He just made me feel like he didn’t even care," she said.
"If they were remorseful, genuinely remorseful, willing to, I don’t know, go back and get some more schooling, then I would say treat them as beginners again, give them the schooling and see where that goes," she said.
At the time of the incident the fire chief and the interim city manager to the city apologized to the city and said these two medics didn’t perform to the standard of care that citizens expect and deserve. The chief said Thursday the investigation continues, and the medics are on administrative duty, but didn’t comment further.