A Chicago Fire Department investigation is still incomplete over a year after paramedics failed to treat a gunshot victim as he lay in the street dying, although the department says it has new rules to avoid the “tragic error” in the future.
Erin Carey, 17, initially survived a gunshot wound to his head early June 18, 2018, and was placed under a white sheet by paramedics and “left for dead” for over an hour, according to a lawsuit filed June 17 by Carey’s family in Cook County Circuit Court.
Five other people were also shot — one of them fatally.
Shortly after the shooting, TV cameras captured Carey moving under the sheet for at least 15 minutes before a paramedic uncovered him and began CPR.
Carey, who had graduated that month from Evanston Township High School, died hours later at a hospital.
The fire department took measures shortly after the incident to prevent another death like Carey’s. Paramedics are now required to attach heart monitors to every patient to confirm their vital signs, CFD spokesman Larry Langford said.
“I can tell you that, yes, we have changed procedures in the aftermath of that tragic error,” Langford said.
In the lawsuit, Carey’s family alleges that paramedics could have assessed Carey and taken him to a hospital for proper care and “at least a dignified transition into death.”
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Instead, the paramedics and Chicago Fire Department operated on a “conscious disregard” for basic training when they placed a white sheet over teen while treating other gunshot victims, the lawsuit states.
An investigation into the handling of shooting victims — and the procedures that led paramedics to leave Carey untreated for several minutes — is still incomplete but days away from being finished, Langford said.
Langford did not answer an email asking if anyone had been disciplined following the incident.
‘Somebody truly dropped the ball on this’
A possible reason paramedics mistakenly left Carey untreated was the “piecemeal” way the shooting was announced to emergency responders, Langford said.
Carey was one of six people shot in the 1300 block of South Loomis Street in the University Village neighborhood, authorities said at the time.
The fire department was reviewing radio transmissions to see why all six victims were not called in at once, but instead separately, leading to fewer resources being directed to the scene, Langford said.
“This was spread out and it wasn’t considered one incident,” Langford said. If it was considered a mass casualty incident, “there would have been one or more supervisors there to call the shots ... There might have been a different response,” he said.
Police said the shooting stemmed from a fight at a party. Four other men and a woman were also shot. The woman, 22-year-old Shalonza E. McToy, was shot multiple times and pronounced dead on scene, authorities said.
Days later, Carey’s father, Eric Carey, spoke at a televised news conference and lamented the fire department’s treatment of his son.
“Somebody truly dropped the ball on this,” he said. “I think the Fire Department really dropped the ball on my son. Did you check and even see if he had a pulse?”
Erin Carey’s mother and administrator of estate, Mechelle Moore Carter, is suing the City of Chicago and unnamed paramedics of the Chicago Fire Department who responded to the shooting.
The lawsuit seeks damages “to prevent a repetition of these circumstances.” The lawsuit also alleges that Carey most likely would have survived if he had been treated sooner.
If paramedics “would have properly assessed Erin Carey and sought him prompt medical treatment” they would have, “more likely than not, rescued him and saved his life,” the lawsuit states.
Carter and her attorney could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department declined to comment.
Change in operating procedures
Following the shooting, the department began investigating how paramedics mistakenly thought Carey was dead, even though he “in fact had life signs despite a traumatic wound from which he could not recover,” Langford said at the time.
Although that investigation is not complete, the department has changed the way paramedics assess shooting victims and anyone else injured.
All patients are now placed on a heart monitors to check for signs of life, Langford said. The monitors will be placed on all patients, unless they have suffered extreme trauma.
The new procedure is “for anybody that we treat, no matter what it looks like, except in cases like decapitation,” Langford said. “The monitor checks for cardiac activity and other electrical impulses generated in a living person. The monitor can go beyond what most people understand as simple flatline.”
In a news conference shortly after the shooting, the fire department said paramedics may have mistaken Carey for dead in the triage process.
“There’s also something going on that a lot of people forget,” Fire Dept. Commissioner Jose Santiago said following the shooting, “it’s known as triage,” referring to the practice of first responders sorting victims by medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.
“When the first ambulance gets on the scene, they take a look on the victims and they concentrate on the ones they know they can save,” Santiago said. “As far as pronouncing someone dead, only the medical examiner can do that.”
A lawyer for Erin’s father, who is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a news conference after the shooting that paramedics should not be making life or death decisions for patients.
“Paramedics cannot be making decisions as to who is going to live and who is going to die in their non-medical opinion,” said Nenye Uche, the father’s attorney. “A person can survive a gunshot wound. The problem is, Erin was never given that opportunity.”
