Free Republic

A firefighter paramedic in Missouri was killed in the line of duty on Sunday after he was allegedly stabbed in the back of an ambulance while transporting a patient to the hospital. Kansas City Fire Department Fire Medic Graham Hoffman, 29, died on Sunday a few hours after he was stabbed in the chest by a patient being taken to the hospital following a routine medical call from police, the city of Kansas City said in a news release. Hoffman’s partner “initiated a crew emergency” after the stabbing and additional fire and police units responded to the scene, the city...

United Nations -- The Israeli military backtracked on its account of the killing of 15 Palestinian medics by its forces last month after phone video appeared to contradict its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire on them in the Gaza Strip. The military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. An Israeli military official, speaking late Saturday on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said that account was “mistaken.” The footage shows the Red Crescent and Civil Defence teams...

Ambulance response times during life-threatening emergencies jumped in the last year, according to revealed data — as the FDNY blames ongoing staffing and recruiting troubles. Average ambulance response time to life-threatening emergencies jumped more than 34 seconds from eight minutes and 14-seconds in the 2024 fiscal year to eight minutes and 48 seconds for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year running from July 1 through November, according to the mayor’s management report. The FDNY goal is to bring ambulance response times to such calls to under seven minutes, the report said. The response times have creeped up in...

71-year-old William Hoesch was out riding his bike in Ranier, Oregon, when he was struck by a vehicle. Luckily, the vehicle that hit him was an ambulance right outside a firehouse. The ambulance driver said that he turned right and heard a thump. He and his coworker got out to see what they had hit. The pair-o'-medics found Hoesch's bike under their tire, and Hoesch in bad shape on the pavement.

GREER, S.C. (WSPA) – A naked man is accused of stealing an ambulance Wednesday and crashing it into a pole in Greer. According to the Greer Police Department, officers were called to a report of a suspicious man banging on the front door of a home on Tryon Street shortly before 11:30 a.m. Arriving officers found the naked man under the home who they said appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Greenville County EMS was called to the scene to provide medical care for the man. After officers left the scene, police said the man became combative, hitting...

Patients waiting at least six hours for an ambulance will become more ‘commonplace’, with exhausted and depleted hospital staff set for ‘a very long winter’, a paramedic has warned. The UK is facing a ‘bleak’ few months amid reports of increasing waits for A&E care. People who suffer heart attacks or strokes are likely to be the worst affected. Health services across the country are experiencing four- to six-hour delays in getting to patients, increasing numbers of ambulances waiting outside hospitals and a backlog of 999 calls. The warning comes as coronavirus deaths rose to their highest daily level since...

A suspect carjacked an ambulance with a patient inside it around 3 a.m. Friday morning in Democrat-run Houston, Texas. The Washington Examiner reports an EMT was also in the ambulance when it was stolen KHOU-11 notes the carjacking occurred after a man fired shots at the ambulance, forcing the driver to stop. The man then climbed into the driver’s seat, taking control of the ambulance. The EMT was in the back with the patient and suspected something was wrong “because they were no longer heading in the right direction.” Police were able to track the ambulance via GPS and take...

Celebrating murder and obstructing EMTs doing their jobs. Dancing obscenely on an ambulance come to help shooting victims.

New York City's EMTs and paramedics are being 'targeted' by anarchists who are smashing ambulance windows, a union leader has said - as he blasted the FDNY for leaving crews to fend for themselves. Bricks were hurled through the windows of four FDNY vehicles and 'FTP,' which stands for 'F**K the police,' was painted on the sides of two ambulances in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, according to Oren Barzilay, president of the Local 2507. There's been at least one of these types of attacks every month since January, all within blocks of each other, said Barzilay, who heads the...

Ambulance workers in Los Angeles County have reportedly been told not to transport patients with “little chance of survival” to local hospitals as intensive care units are overwhelmed with COVID patients. The directive from the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, obtained by CNN, also tells the ambulance workers to “conserve the use of oxygen.” In Los Angeles, many intensive care units are at capacity as a disastrous wave of the virus surges across Southern California. -snip Due to these factors, EMS workers were told to “perform resuscitation for at least 20 minutes” if a patient’s heart has stopped...

With intensive care units at Southern California hospitals nearly full because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency (EMS) has directed ambulance crews not to transport patients with little chance of survival to hospitals, and to conserve the use of oxygen. Los Angeles and Southern California are dealing with one of the country's worst outbreaks of the novel coronavirus. ICU bed capacity plunged to 0% in Southern California last month, as more and more people were admitted to hospital seeking treatment for Covid-19. Now, many medical facilities simply do not have the space to take...

An armed man has stolen an ambulance and driven it at multiple people in a busy city. A child, believed to be a baby or toddler, is among those injured and dashed to hospital. Emergency services are desperately trying to calm the chaotic situation in Oslo, Norway. Witnesses said they've also heard gunshots. A police helicopter has been spotted scouring the vicinity.

CLAIM: There were not enough ambulances available to save the victims of a recent mass shooting in Odessa, Texas. VERDICT: FALSE. The City of Odessa said that its ambulances responded to the shooting quickly. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) received praised from his rivals onstage at the third Democrat debate at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, on Thursday evening. But he is being criticized by local West Texas CBS affiliate KOSA-7, which says that his claim that there were not enough ambulances available is “absolutely wrong.” O’Rourke said during the debate (transcript via ABC News): When we see that...

By 2016, two years into the expansion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 17.6 million previously uninsured people around the U.S. had gained health insurance coverage. But with the expansion, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Kentucky found that ambulance dispatches for minor injuries like abrasions, minor burns and muscle sprains rose by a staggering 37% in New York City. "Policymakers were operating under the assumption that the expansion was going to get people out of emergency rooms," says Andrew Friedson, PhD, assistant professor of economics at CU Denver. "Few people thought a larger enrollment...

Hong Kong Protesters Swiftly Give Way To Ambulance If there’s one thing you need to see before Monday ends, it’s the stunning scene of Hong Kong protesters giving way to an ambulance.Despite pouring into the metropolitan’s streets like butter spread on bread, protesters – a whopping 2 million of them – made no fuss in a crucial time of need.SourcePraise be to thee, Hong Kongers.Crowds parted “like the Red Sea” for ambulance On Sunday (16 Jun), videos surfaced online of an ambulance crossing a literal sea of black.SourceAs the siren’s urgent blares and red-blue emergency lights demanded attention, Hong Kongers...

Four US paramedics accused of racially profiling and failing to provide medical care to a dying woman face a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday. Crystle Galloway's mother says medics assumed the Tampa, Florida, family could not afford the ambulance cost. The 30-year-old's mother drove her to hospital instead. Ms Galloway slipped in to a coma after suffering a presumed stroke, and died five days later. Hillsborough County officials have already accepted responsibility. The incident occurred early on the morning of 4 July this year, days after Ms Galloway had given birth by Caesarean section. Her mother, Nicole Black, called 911 after...

A woman in the United Kingdom has pleaded guilty to a public order offense after she was accused of leaving what paramedics called a “vile” note on an ambulance that was responding to an emergency call. The woman, identified by police as 26-year-old Kirsty Sharman, was in court Tuesday on charges relating to the incident. Authorities said she verbally abused paramedics and left a profane note on an ambulance Sunday morning that was in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England, responding to a call about a person experiencing breathing problems. After the call, when the paramedics returned to the emergency vehicle, they...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A man on his way to a Bluefield drug rehab facility took off in the ambulance after the driver had stopped to help a second crew member. The stop occurred Tuesday night on Interstate 77 just east of Charleston. According to police, the Priority Ambulance driver stopped because the patient was struggling with his fellow crew member in the back of the vehicle. He stopped to help and then the patient took off in the ambulance. He later let the female crew member out of the ambulance. The man–driving the ambulance–was later pulled over in downtown Charleston....

The Salt Lake City police detective who arrested nurse Alex Wubbels for not allowing police to draw blood from an unconscious patient has been fired from his part-time paramedic job with Gold Cross Ambulance Service. Payne was placed on paid administrative leave from his full-time job as an officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department after a video of the arrest went viral. In a separate video recorded after the arrest, Payne asked another officer how the incident would affect his part-time position with the ambulance company. Payne bragged that he could retaliate against the hospital by only bringing...

If you’re waiting for the administration to replace the Affordable Care Act, you should pray that you won’t need an ambulance. If you do call the 911 emergency services, then you’ll be waiting longer than you would have before President Obama’s signature healthcare reform was implemented. How much longer? On average, close to 20 percent more, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research.