- An Arizona man filed his intent to sue the city of Phoenix for wrongful death after his wife died, ABC 15 reported.
- Bruce Sandberg said he called 911 for an ambulance when his wife had chest pains, but a fire truck came instead.
- First responders reportedly thought Francesca Sandberg was experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, but she was actually having a heart attack.
An Arizona man has signaled his intent to sue the city of Phoenix after he called an ambulance for his wife, but the city only sent a fire truck. First responders said his wife did not need to go to the hospital, and she died shortly thereafter from a heart attack.
Francesca Sandberg had been suffering from Covid-19 when her condition worsened, promoting her husband Bruce to call 911 on December 31, 2021, according to an ABC 15 investigation.
"Shortness of breath from her heart pounding," Bruce told the dispatcher, per ABC 15. "She has said, 'Please call the ambulance for me.'"
Instead of an ambulance, dispatchers sent Fire Engine 50 from the Phoenix Fire Department, Bruce told ABC 15. The firefighter-paramedics that evaluated Francesca concluded that she was suffering from Covid-19 symptoms and did not need an ambulance to the hospital, ABC 15 reported, citing an internal fire department investigation.
According to ABC 15, the investigation found "discrepancies in the firefighters' incident report" that prompted questions over whether the firefighter paramedics had done the correct tests on Francesca.
"I trusted these guys. I believed him. I trusted them. Big mistake," Bruce told ABC 15. "There was no EKG on her or anything."
The firefighters helped Francesca into Bruce's truck, and he took her to a nearby hospital himself.
"At that point, I was going to become proactive no matter what they said or did because they weren't moving," Bruce told ABC 15. "The last thing she said to me was, 'Are we there yet? Honey? Are we there yet?'"
Bruce took his wife to Honor Health Deer Valley Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later, the outlet reported.
"Her eyes were glassed over, and I knew," Bruce told ABC 15. "I went, 'Oh my God! Oh, no!' And I just went primal."
Following the fire department's internal investigation, Bruce filed a notice of claim that he intends to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Phoenix, ABC 15 reported. The internal investigation said that the responding firefighter paramedics did not recall being asked for an ambulance.
Bill McDonald, an emergency medical services expert and executive director of McDonald Public Safety Consulting, said it may not matter whether the firefighters remember being asked for the ambulance.
"They asked for an ambulance initially, and they got the fire truck instead. So even if they never asked the firefighters for an ambulance, the 911 call came in as, 'We want an ambulance,'" McDonald told Insider. "Those calls are recorded, so when it goes to discovery in the civil litigation, whoever the expert is that they hire...will review those tapes."
A spokesperson for the Phoenix Fire Department said they "cannot comment on this incident due to the fact it is in litigation."
"Our procedures dictate that we transport any customer to the hospital who requests transport via ambulance," the spokesperson told Insider.
The department's internal investigation could not definitively conclude whether responders "denied" an ambulance, but the investigation did find that the responding fire crew did not get the proper documentation needed for when a patient refuses an ambulance, according to ABC 15.
McDonald told Insider that whether a patient refuses to go in the ambulance or even refuses to sign documentation to that effect, "there has to be documentation" by the crew.
Bruce also told ABC 15 that the firefighter paramedics did not do an EKG on his wife, which McDonald said would be the "baseline" of testing that first responders would do on a patient complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath.
"Even if they thought it was Covid, and she had any kind of chest-related complaint, it's a cardiovascular complaint, they should have done an EKG just as a baseline," McDonald said. "There's really never a need or a reason not to send an ambulance. And in this case, if they were paramedics, they should have done more of a thorough examination."
Bruce "absolutely" has a strong case for a wrongful death suit, McDonald said, which are a common avenue for patients to seek relief for various complications. More rare, McDonald previously said, are criminal charges, which were recently filed against a Pennsylvania dispatcher who declined to send an ambulance to a patient who later died.
"This is definitely a civil case, and they definitely have a good case because the firefighter paramedic failed to use all of the resources that they had available to them to examine this patient," McDonald said. "For them to violate their own policy...in a civil case, you've pretty much got them."
Bruce told ABC 15 that he plans to file a lawsuit because "other people may become victim to the same thing."
"She was the rock for our family," Bruce said of his wife, per ABC 15. "It was heartbreaking that there could have been a chance that she could have survived."