An eight-month-old baby died Wednesday in Montreal after being rushed by police to hospital before paramedics arrived at the scene.
Posted at 2:57 p.m.
Updated at 4:35 p.m.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) did not want to comment on the event since it will be assessed by the Coroner’s Office.
An emergency call was received at Urgences santé around 9:07 a.m. for a baby in respiratory distress on Lincoln Street in downtown Montreal. In the absence of respondents available at this exact moment, the information was transmitted by 9-1-1 to Urgences Santé in written form.
The call was then assigned a priority 3 call, that is to say that an ambulance is then sent to the scene, but without activating its sirens.
At the time, it was then impossible to reach the author of the call again to have more details on the baby’s state of health, said Wednesday a spokesperson for Urgences santé, Jean-Pierre Rouleau. .
Maximum priority
However, twelve minutes later, a second call from 9-1-1 established that his state of health had deteriorated. A priority code of 0, the most urgent, was then established and a second emergency vehicle was sent to the scene.
Arrived on the scene even before the paramedics, the SPVM police officers from neighborhood station 12, the one covering the territory of Westmount, west of downtown, found the mother in the street, on the sidewalk, with her baby in arms. Given the urgency of the situation, they then decided to transport the child themselves to the nearest hospital.
According to our information, they tried to call Urgences santé to request the presence of an ambulance as soon as possible. Faced with the delay, however, they felt they could not wait and brought him to the Montreal General Hospital, not far from there.
Contacted following the event by the SPVM, the Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) decided that there was no need to open an investigation into this intervention.
“It was very urgent to bring the child to the hospital, so they made this decision […]. The decision was made not to launch the investigation because it was not a police intervention, but an aid intervention,” confirmed BEI spokeswoman Mercedes Pacho.
Protocols respected, says Health Emergencies
Arrived on the scene a minute after the departure of the police, at 9:21 a.m., the paramedics received the mandate to join them at the hospital where the infant had been brought in order to transfer him to a pediatric center.
The child was then in critical condition. He would be dead soon after. According to our information, the baby of a few months already presented serious health problems.
Urgences santé affirms that this sad tragedy is in no way due to the lack of personnel which has regularly affected its service in recent weeks.
“Our protocols were followed to the letter. The assignment of the ambulance vehicle was immediate, insists one of its spokespersons, Jean-Pierre Rouleau. The desired level [de personnel] was reached today. This is not related to the lack of manpower. »
With the collaboration of Daniel Renaud, The Press