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May 12, 2008 7:56 pm US/Pacific
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Lawsuit Against Medical Crew After Fiancee's Death
WOODLAND (CBS13) ―
The fiancée of a Yolobus driver who died after an accident is suing the emergency crew that tried to save his life. She was shocked to hear that he did not die from the accident itself, but from complications from a medical procedure that should have saved his life.
"I cry every night, I miss him every day," said Antionette Fonseca. "I'm angry every day at the people who took him away from us."
When 48-year old Quintin Jones crashed his Yolobus into a pole in Woodland on the morning of February 28, Antionette was told he may have had an aneurysm just before impact.
But it turns out that there was no aneurysm, nothing wrong with his head at all. In fact, the coroner classified his death as an accident by therapeutic misadventure. The injury that caused his death was not received in the bus, but inside the air ambulance.
Jones aspirated on his own blood following a cricothyrotomy. Paramedics first on scene said Jones was alert and oriented, talking to them as they brought him by ambulance to a nearby airport where an air ambulance was waiting.
By the time they got there with Jones, the two flight nurses with CalStar, the air ambulance company, said Jones only had "weak grunts" and "no clear speech."
They attempted to intubate him, sticking a tube down his throat to open his airway. It didn't work, so they tried the cricothyrotomy, cutting open an airway in Jones' neck.
According to the coroner, complications from that procedure killed Quintin Jones.
The president of CalStar told us, "We're still trying to determine what our nurses could have done that contributed to this. At this point, the care provided seems up to standard."
Antionette said that an apology wouldn't be enough at this point. She said that if they wanted to do that, they already would have.
The only thing they've done is send her a bill for $25,000.
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