The grieving widow of the man who died on the streets outside the San Fernando General Hospital waiting on an ambulance said yesterday police officers refused to assist her husband as she begged them for help.
Radica Sitahal said on Tuesday she spent over half-an-hour pleading with police officers and members of the public to assist her husband of 34 years, Keith Sitahal, an amputee, before he was taken to the nearby hospital by the San Fernando City Corporation Disaster Management Unit (DMU) employees.
“I was begging the police officers on the scene to carry him to the hospital but they said that is not their job. They can’t move him from there,” a grief-stricken Radica said following the autopsy on her husband at the San Fernando morgue.
“Why they couldn’t put him in a van from right there? It would have taken them not even one minute to drop him,” she said.
The incident attracted national attention after San Fernando Mayor Kazim Hosein telephoned Health Minister Terrance Deyalsingh to arrange an ambulance for the sick man on Tuesday. Hosein eventually instructed DMU employees to take the man to the nearby hospital where he died receiving treatment.
An autopsy done yesterday at the San Fernando mortuary showed he died as a result of a myocardial infraction (heart attack). Radica said she had taken her husband by taxi to hospital for a blood test and they were returning to their home at Riverside Drive, Williamsville, when he collapsed.
“We were going to get a taxi and he just fell down. I was asking everybody to help him and it’s only when the mayor came people started to act and helped him,” she said, before breaking down in tears.
The couple’s eldest child, Diana, said she was deeply hurt over the treatment meted out to her father. She said: “I don't like the response my father got. He was lying in the road just opposite the hospital. That is slackness. An ambulance couldn’t take five minutes to reach there and he had to die like that?”
Hosein has since revealed he will be writing Deyalsingh to request an ambulance service in San Fernando for the community.
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Police rendered aid
The T&T Guardian contacted public information officer in the T&T Police Service (TTPS) ASP Michael Pierre yesterday for comment. He said: “I spoke to one of the officers who was on the scene. He said when he got on the scene there was a registered nurse rendering aid. They were seeking direction from her on whether the man should be moved.
“He couldn’t say how long the man was there but he did say there was someone in attendance when he got there. He said soon after that, the mayor called the DMU employees to take the man to the hospital.”
Pierre said while each circumstance was different, police officers were mandated to render aid to injured people.
“You treat each circumstance based on its merit but as police officers we are mandated to render aid to injured people. Contacting an ambulance or the Fire Services is also rendering aid,” he said.