Two EMS workers were charged with murder on Tuesday after a man in their care died when they allegedly strapped him face down on a stretcher, officials shared.
The Illinois responders, 50-year-old Peter Cadigan and 44-year-old Peggy Finley, worked for LifeStar as emergency medical responders.
Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright shared on Tuesday that they were both charged with first-degree murder in relation to the death of Earl L. Moore Jr. on Dec. 18.
Wright added that the two were responsible because they should have known “based upon their training, experience and the surrounding circumstances, that such acts would create a substantial probability of great bodily harm or death.”
On Dec. 18, at around 2 a.m., the Springfield Police Department received a call about people inside a home carrying firearms. When officers arrived at the scene, they found Moore, who had made the call, and police determined he was having “hallucinations due to alcohol withdrawal,” according to a news release.
Officers said that upon interacting with Moore, they “quickly realized that the patient was in need of medical assistance.” This led to them calling an ambulance to the scene.
Body camera footage of the night showed a female paramedic instructing Moore to walk to the ambulance, but he was unable to due to his condition. Despite this, police said that “the medical personnel were not offering any assistance” to him.
Instead, three officers who responded to the home helped Moore outside and onto the stretcher the paramedics had pulled out.
From there, the footage shows the EMS workers putting Moore in the prone position, face down, on the stretcher. About an hour after he first called 911, Moore was declared dead at the hospital, Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon said at the Tuesday news conference, NBC News reported.
Wright said that Moore died after being taken into an ambulance face down with “tightened restraints” on his back and lower body, stopping him from being able to get off the stretcher.
Allmon echoed this, sharing that the autopsy determined Moore’s cause of death was compressional and positional asphyxia “due to prone face-down restraint on a paramedic transportation cot/stretcher by tightened straps across the back.”
His death has been classified as a homicide, and immediately after, Chief Ken Scarlette requested that the Illinois State Police conduct an independent investigation of what happened.
The investigation results, paired with the autopsy, resulted in charges being filed against the paramedics.
Both are currently being detained in Sangamon County jail on bail of $1 million each. Both face a range of 20 to 60 years in prison if convicted.
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