MEMPHIS – Tire Nichols writhed in pain on the sidewalk after being beaten by a Memphis police officer. His back was against a police car, his hands were cuffed and his face was covered in blood. He was groaning, and he continued to fall.
A few feet away, two paramedics were watching. They helped Mr Nichols sit up several times after he fell on his side, but then, for nearly seven minutes, they did not touch him. At one point, they left.
Mr. Nichols, a father and FedEx worker who loves photography and skateboarding, died in hospital three days later. Five officers were fired and charged with second-degree murder in his death.
Videos of the January 7 beating released on Friday made people scrutinize those officers’ actions frame by frame. But the footage also brought attention to emergency medical workers, who were the first to arrive on the scene after the beating, raising questions about whether they should or could do more to help Mr. are not.
JB Smiley Jr., vice president of Memphis City Council, said: “It didn’t seem humane to help a man who first called this mother, but then relied on the car again. . .
Both paramedics who arrived first to care for Mr. Nichols appear to be emergency medical technicians with the Memphis Fire Department. Fire EMTs are often more responsive than ambulance crews to emergency calls, but their job is primarily to perform basic first aid: conducting a basic neurological assessment, making sure the patient is safe. breathing, check vital signs, and stop any major bleeding.
Qwanesha Ward, a spokeswoman for the Fire Department, said on Friday that the department had suspended two of its EMTs who treated Nichols and an investigation is expected to conclude. ends at the beginning of this week. She declined to identify the medical staff.
To many in Memphis, the videos were troubling, seemingly showing paramedics reacting in a lack of urgency to Mr. Nichols’ suffering.
Emergency professionals note that the first doctors on the scene often have the least training and are often partly dependent on the police – who, in this case, drug-using Mr. Nichols – to understand the patient’s condition.
Dr Sean Montgomery, a trauma specialist at Duke University’s medical school, said that it was difficult to gauge the medical response due to the low quality of nearby surveillance cameras, but paramedics responding did not appear to be responding. follow standard procedures. Request hemostasis of any major bleeding and then assess the patient’s airway and breathing.
More about Tire Nichols .’s Death
He said it was not clear that anyone had begun to fully evaluate Mr Nichols, by those standards, until about 15 minutes after paramedics arrived. That’s when doctors can be seen going into their pockets of tools and treatments. At the time, it had been 21 minutes since an officer last kicked Mr. Nichols.
“Patients clearly appear shocked and short of breath, even with poor camera angles,” Dr. Montgomery wrote in an email, adding that emergency response teams are often not properly trained. and lack of funds.
Alan Tyroch, chief of surgery and trauma at the Texas Tech University Health Science Center in El Paso, said he had watched the response video multiple times but found the quality to be so poor it was almost impossible health care services can be assessed. was provided, or by whom.
“No one really knows except the people who have been there,” he said.
More than 25 minutes after officers stopped beating Mr. Nichols, an ambulance arrived at the scene. Medical response times are an issue in many cities, including Memphis, where officials have said they are experiencing an increase in 911 callsstrain the system.
In recent years, the Memphis fire union has try to calm the fear about slow response times by noting that Fire Department EMTs often appear before ambulance units and more skilled paramedics. Union officials did not respond to questions, and the Fire Department did not respond to questions about the specifics of the response.
Mr. Nichols was seriously injured after being kicked, punched and beaten with batons by police. Then they said they stopped him because he was driving recklessly. The police pulled him out of the car and asked him to lie on the ground, continuing to scream and threaten him even as he lay on his side, begging them to stop. When a police officer sprayed him with pepper spray, he got up and ran towards his mother’s house, but the officers caught him about 200 feet from her house and began to beat him.
Some officers then dragged the handcuffed Mr. Nichols to a police vehicle and supported him against it. In the first five minutes that paramedics were on the scene, Mr. Nichols fell six times. Paramedics helped him to his feet several times and at one point asked a police officer to shine a light on him.
At the time, several Memphis officers could be heard insisting that Mr. Nichols, 29, must be high, and they seemed surprised to learn that nothing was found in the bag or in the vehicle. your.
Some laughed as they recounted their attack in detail. One said: “Oh my god, I hit him with a straight lawn mower, dog. It is not clear from the body camera videos whether the medical staff heard those conversations.
At times, paramedics appeared to delay the arrival of police on the scene, at other times standing back when a police officer asked Mr. Nichols what medication he had taken. Mr Nichols mostly groaned in response, though twice he appeared to reply “alcohol”.
For the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds, no one touched Mr. Nichols as he rolled back and forth on the sidewalk.
Nichols’ official cause of death has not yet been released by the Shelby County medical examiner’s office. The family said they conducted a separate autopsy and determined that he was bleeding profusely.
Dr Montgomery said that when a young person like Mr Nichols died three days after being hit in the head, the cause was most likely brain trauma. He said that, based on the video of the beating, Mr Nichols could be at risk of serious brain injury, broken ribs, collapsed lung and internal bleeding.
Dr Montgomery said it was not easy to say whether getting Mr Nichols into an ambulance or getting to the hospital faster would make a difference, although some cases, such as brain injuries, would be resolved soon. .
He added: “Some brain injuries are too severe for medical care to improve them. “However, if you manage other injuries well, the brain will function better. For example, if the patient is not breathing well, the brain will have a much worse outcome.”
Police in Memphis said Mr Nichols was taken to hospital after complaining of difficulty breathing.
At a march Saturday in response to the police killing, some Memphis residents said they were almost worried about the medical response as well as the officers’ actions. Towanna Murphy, who runs a radio station in Memphis, said paramedics need to be held accountable.
“When you see someone lying there,” Ms. Murphy said, “you have to get medical treatment right away.”
