A mother from Philadelphia, who was already worried about her injured child, was shocked when she noticed the emergency responder, who was driving them to the hospital, was texting and checking his Facebook while behind the wheel.
Ebony Clarke recorded the distracted EMT and posted the footage onto her Facebook with the caption:
“In the ambulance with my baby on the way to the ER. Trying to figure out why the EMT driving is on his phone typing long ass paragraphs and browsing Facebook while driving I guess his phone is more important than our life.”
Clarke and her son, Jeron, were on their way to Albert Einstein Medical Center to get a cut on Jeron’s head examined, WPVI News reports.
Clarke is now turning to local media to get answers. The commissioner of the Philadelphia Fire Department, Derrick Sawyer, said he was ‘disgusted’ when he first saw the video, Global News reports.
“As the fire commissioner, I want to apologize to [Clarke] personally because this is not what we train our medics to do, what we train any of our drivers to do.”
In the 30-second video, you can see the driver holding his cellphone in one hand as the ambulance rushes to the hospital. The driver can be seen scrolling through different apps and tapping different features. Clarke claims the driver never took his eyes completely off of his phone.
Commissioner Sawyer says they have a strict ‘no cell phone’ while driving policy. That includes surfing the internet, texting or talking on the phone.
“We are going to identify the person in the video and we are going to bring him in. We’ll discipline him,” said Sawyer.
The entire incident is now under investigation with the Philadelphia Fire Department, Global News reports.
Source: Yahoo! News