WASHINGTON — A D.C. neighborhood is up in arms after it reportedly took an ambulance more than 40 minutes to come to the aid of a stabbing victim.
ABC7 reports that a 24-year-old man was stabbed in the hallway of a building in Southeast on Monday night and was critically injured. The closest ambulance wasn’t available, and while witnesses say multiple police cars showed up immediately, it was 43 minutes before an ambulance showed up.
The building super tells ABC7 that he counted at least nine police cars, but that it was 43 minutes, by his phone, before the ambulance got there. He showed video of multiple police officers grabbing people who he said were “panicking.”
D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Tim Wilson disputed the length of time it took the ambulance to get to the scene, ABC7 reports. Wilson says dispatch records show it took 28 minutes for the ambulance to arrive after 911 received the call.
Also, Wilson days paramedics were on scene within four minutes of being dispatched and provided care to the stabbing victim while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
D.C. ambulance union president Kenneth Lyons tells ABC7 that ambulance calls in the District have more than doubled in the past three years, but that the number of ambulances — 39 — has stayed the same.
It’s not the first time D.C. ambulance response times have left people upset — most notably, last year Cecil Mills died 20 minutes after collapsing across the street from a Northeast firehouse. No one came to his aid.
See a report from ABC7:
