Samu operator sent to court for “failure to assist people in danger”

The trial will take place on July 4 in Strasbourg, seven years after the death of the young woman who was mocked on the telephone by a regulator. The investigating judge, on the other hand, also decided to dismiss the charges of involuntary homicide.

The Strasbourg Samu operator who mocked Naomi Musenga on the phone at the end of 2017, a 22-year-old woman who died a few hours later in hospital, will be judged for “failure to assist a person in danger”, announced the prosecution to AFP, Tuesday May 28. She is being pursued “for having voluntarily refrained from coming to the aid of Madame [Naomi] Musenga” and he is accused of “not having respected the protocols” Samu support. The investigating judge, on the other hand, also decided to dismiss the charges of involuntary homicide. The trial will be held on July 4 at the Strasbourg judicial court.

Mother of an 18-month-old child, Naomi Musenga died on December 29, 2017 at Strasbourg hospital after being treated with “an overall delay of almost 2 hours 20 minutes”according to a report from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs. “I have got a very strong stomachache”, “I will die…”whispered Naomi, struggling to express herself. “Yes you will die, certainly one day like everyone else”, replied the regulator, who no longer works at the CHU. Naomi first spoke to the police, firefighters and Samu before being redirected to SOS Médecins.

His death sparked a wave of national indignation after the broadcast, a few months later, of his exchanges with the operator. However, there is no “no causal link” between the negligence in the care of the young woman by the operator and the latter’s death, established the scientific expertise carried out as part of the investigation and cited by the prosecution. Naomi Musenga was “already beyond any therapeutic resource at the time of the call” at the Samu according to the experts, specifies the prosecution.

“We are relieved that there is a date, that there is a possible conviction”reacted Praise Musenga, the victim’s sister. “We’re waiting for this, because we have to move on. For several years, I haven’t had a proper life, I only thought about that all the time.” However, she regretted that the operator was the only person to be referred to court. “There is a whole chain of responsibility that has not been highlighted”, she estimated. The Igas report “really highlights the serious dysfunctions that existed at the hospital level.”