Emergency medical service operator sentenced to 12 months suspended prison sentence

The court went beyond the prosecution’s demands, which had requested a ten-month suspended sentence. Corinne M., the 60-year-old operator, was also ordered to pay 15,000 euros to Naomi Musenga’s family in legal fees.

The emergency medical service operator who mocked Naomi Musenga on the phone in late 2017, a 22-year-old woman who died shortly afterwards in hospital, was found guilty of failing to assist a person in danger and sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended, on Thursday 4 July, by the Strasbourg Criminal Court (Bas-Rhin).

The court went beyond the prosecution’s demands, which had requested a ten-month suspended sentence. Corinne M., the 60-year-old operator, was also ordered to pay 15,000 euros to Naomi Musenga’s family in legal fees. She has ten days to appeal.

Considering the offence of failure to assist a person in danger “perfectly characterized”the prosecutor, Agnès Robine, requested a “a clear sanction of principle, to recall the law and the duty of humanity of each citizen”.

Deploring a “morally and humanly inappropriate behavior”she insisted on the “serious negligence” committed by the regulator, which nevertheless had a “solid experience” professional for the eight years she had been working in this position, after having been an ambulance driver.

“At no time does she try to find out what symptoms Mrs Musenga has, even though she tells her she is going to die.”the magistrate stressed. “I can’t help you because I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”, she extracted from the recording of the conversation between the suffering young woman and the operator. “This sentence sends shivers down your spine”the prosecutor stressed. “It was the essence of his mission to ask the callers questions.”

“A soundtrack like this, I dare hope that in my life I will never hear again,” supported the lawyer for the victim’s family, Jean-Christophe Coubris. “We have a person who has twice failed in his mission, and who is still today looking for excuses. We are not asking him to make a diagnosis, we are asking him to do what he was hired to do: ask the right questions, make the connection, and facilitate the regulatory work.”