A Brooklyn woman died during the December blizzard because the city never declared a snow emergency and its lackluster response left the streets impassable and the 911 system in disarray, lawyers for her family said yesterday.
The lawyers said they will file a multimillion-dollar suit against the city stemming from the death of Lillie Cockburn, 56, claiming that the snow aside, 911 dispatchers never even sent an ambulance to help the stricken woman and fire and EMS crews on the street refused to help.
Cockburn’s son managed to get her to the hospital after a fruitless six-hour wait for EMS, but it was too late to save her.
Cockburn died of a drastically lowered blood pressure.
“The doctors told me that had she gotten to the hospital a little earlier, they could have saved her,” said her grieving son Jason.
Jason Cockburn called 911 around 7 a.m. on Dec. 27 after finding Lillie semi-conscious on the floor of their Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment.
But he couldn’t get through to 911 a second time and by 1 p.m., a family member with a car was able to take Lillie to Interfaith Hospital.
(Source: NY Post)
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3 Responses
Bloomberg – penny wise, pound foolish.
I expected there would be a lawsuit and there should be. There is absolutely no excuse for what happened. The city should have doubled its efforts in such a situation and there should be no coverups for those who failed the citizens of New York. The heads of these departments make exorbitant salaries and they do not deserve their jobs if they cannot step up to the plate when there are tested and fail.
However much i agree with #’s 1 and 7 and feel strongly with jason cockburn, something’s telling me if he wins the money will come from our very hard earned taxes thereby leaving the city in a bigger debt blunder than uptil now. i do hope he gets wat he deserves for this and hope the judges have sense to pull it out of this million aire culprit bloombug. Let him pay for his negligence.