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 the woman’s family said today.
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 that 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 too save her.
“The doctors told me that had she gotten to the hospital a little earlier, they could have saved her,” said her grieving son Jason. “I didn’t get the help I needed.”
To make matters worse, a police officer later phoned the house to see whether the family had called an ambulance earlier in the day.
When told that no ambulance came and that Lillie was dead, the cop simply said, “Oh,” and hung up, according to John Dalli, the Cockburn family’s lawyer.
Jason Cockburn called 911 around 7 a.m. on Dec. 27 after finding his mother Lillie semi-conscious on the floor of their Bed-Stuy apartment.
After helping her back to bed, he left his mom with neighbors and went outside to shovel a path for the EMTs and to try and find a taxi.
He said he was relieved to find a fire truck on the street, but when he appealed for help, he was directed to an ambulance parked nearby.
The ambulance crew said they couldn’t help him and directed him to call 911, he said. “When I first saw them I thought that was the help I needed for my mother,” Jason said. “They said there was nothing they could do.”
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.
Cockburn, a secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs, died of a drastically lowered blood pressure, which could have been treated with an infusion of fluids, said Dalli, who filed papers last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court to force the city to retain records of the incident.
Jason Cockburn, 27, said he and his family were devastated by his mother’s untimely death.
“I’m still in disbelief,” he said. “I still walk around as if my mother was still here.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department called the situation “tragic” and said they would review the papers thoroughly upon receipt.