Family members of a 19-year-old who died in an Indiana car crash held a vigil Tuesday and called for justice, claiming her wait for an ambulance was responsible for her death.
A 911 dispatcher received a call on Sept. 16 around 9:50 a.m. about the car wreck on U.S. 20 in Gary.
Gary police arrived on the scene and waited for 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive for Justice Rutherford Wilson, her family said. Wilson later died from her injuries at a hospital.
“It’s ridiculous,” mother Crystal Wilson said. “Nobody not just my daughter should have to lay there and suffer feel like they have no help at all.”
The ambulance was from a private company that was far from the scene because local ambulances were tied up, the Lake County 911 Dispatch Executive Director said, adding that “when the call came in, an ambulance was dispatched immediately.”
“It took the ambulance company awhile to get there,” Hitchcock added. “You can't fault us for that."
But Gary’s mayor said help would have arrived sooner if the county's call taker relayed proper information about the crash.
“If the severity had been communicated, then there were certainly other personnel that could have responded,” Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said.
A month after Justice's accident, 81-year-old Kenneth Booker of Griffith died waiting for help after Lake County 911 sent paramedics to the wrong address.
Booker's son attended justice's vigil to show support. Both families said the deaths they say may have been preventable.
“It’s not just errors where people ended up in hospital with broken arms,” Justice’s aunt Angie Wilson said at the protest. “There are people that are dead, they are gone.”
Justice’s family said they say they will be seeking legal action.
