Family of bus driver questions slow response to seizure call

A Colorado Springs family questions whether a loved one would still be alive if medical help had arrived sooner.

KRDO13 Investigates has learned it took 22 minutes for the first medical team to be dispatched and arrive at the scene of a Mountain Metro Transit bus driver having a seizure back in October.

By that time, the driver couldn't be saved. 

Two passengers were quick to jump into action on the morning of October 14 when TJ Turner fell out of his seat onto the floor of his bus.

They immediately notified Mountain Metro Transit dispatch of the emergency. 

"Your bus driver is having a seizure.  I am parking the bus in front of Firestone Complete Auto," one of the men told the dispatcher. 

He brought the bus to a stop along South Academy, just south of Astrozon. 

Although the bus was stopped, the engine was left running, so multiple cameras on the bus were still recording, with time stamp providing an exact timeline of the incident. 

It was 7:52am when the passenger finished telling the dispatcher about the seizure. 

At that point, TJ was still alive. 

The passengers reported he was unconscious and snoring. 

At 8:04am, another Mountain Metro driver steps onboard. 

At 8:09am, the other driver reported a second seizure, which upgraded the call to a more serious incident, prompting the 911 center to send an ambulance. 

Less than a minute later, a Mountain Metro supervisor arrived, and was surprised to find out an ambulance wasn't already there. 

"AMR hasn't shown up yet?" he asked. 

The other driver said it had not. 

At 8:13am, that supervisor reported the driver still had a pulse, but was barely breathing. 

Finally at 8:14am, 22 minutes after the passenger first reported the seizure to the bus dispatcher, the first paramedic stepped onto the bus. 

The paramedic moved TJ to the aisle and began CPR. 

At 8:16am, the ambulance arrived, followed by a fire truck two minutes after that. 

The crew continued several rounds of CPR, but at 8:26am, they announced that TJ had died. 

TJ's family says they will never forget his unique laugh. 

He had a passion for driving, first on a school bus for Fountain Fort Carson schools, and later for Mountain Metro in Colorado Springs. 

His mother and brother did not want to go on camera, but tell KRDO they couldn't believe it took 22 minutes for help to arrive. 

The Colorado Springs Fire Department declined to speak with KRDO on camera, but explained through email that this call was assigned to a CMED team. 

A CMED team responds to less urgent calls like a fall, a sick person, or an allergic reaction. 

The use of a CMED team keeps fire engines and ambulances available to respond to more serious calls like fires, heart attacks, or shootings. 

It turns out about 30 percent of seizure calls in Colorado Springs, including the one involving TJ Turner, are handled by a CMED team, which carry seizure medication. 

As to why this particular call was handled by a CMED team instead of a fire truck and ambulance, a CSFD spokesperson told KRDO, “The response to any 911 call is based on the information that is relayed by the calling party and received by the call taker.” 

However, it’s unclear what specific criteria prevented a full emergency response in this case. 

KRDO13 obtained copies of the two calls made from the bus dispatch center to the 911 dispatch center. 

The first call relayed the information from the passengers, that the driver was unconscious and snoring after suffering a seizure. 

At no point did the dispatcher say that the driver was beginning to recover, only that he had “calmed down” after the first seizure. 

She was told by the 911 calltaker that paramedics were on the way. 

The second call was made to 911 when the bus dispatcher learned from the other bus driver on scene that TJ was foaming at the mouth and suffering a second seizure. 

Once again, the bus dispatcher told the 911 calltaker that TJ was breathing, but not conscious. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, seizures don’t usually require emergency medical attention, but there are situations when emergency medical care is needed. 

Among the conditions listed for those situations is when a person has never had a seizure before. 

The bus dispatcher that day never passed along any type of medical history or conditions that would have made it a more urgent or less urgent situation. 

When asked by the 911 calltaker if TJ was a diabetic or epileptic or had a history of stroke , the bus dispatcher said she didn’t know.

According to CSFD, the average response time for a normal emergency call in Colorado Springs is 5 minutes, 41 seconds. 

However, the average CMED response time is 10 minutes and 3 seconds, due to the fact that those vehicles don’t use emergency lights and sirens on the way to a location. 

The CSFD spokesperson told KRDO that the response time of this particular call was 14 minutes, 40 seconds from the time the CMED group left the station until it arrived, and the additional travel time was due to delays from road construction in the area. 

Dr. Brad Priebe is a neurologist at Peak Neurology in north Colorado Springs. 

While not wanting to speculate on TJ’s case, Priebe pointed out that just because a patient stops shaking doesn't mean the seizure is over. 

He says when a patient doesn’t begin to recover and regain consciousness, it’s generally very concerning. 

"Certainly for these events of prolonged seizure, or seizure where the patient has an event without a very clear returning to baseline, kind of a clear slow resolution back to baseline, that's when I would expect a greater urgency of response to occur,” says Priebe. 

Dr. Priebe was also careful not to second guess first responders, but added that when little is known about the person involved in a seizure incident, the safest response would be a quick one. 

“I just don't think, based on very limited clinical information as this person is having a seizure, what that outcome is going to be,” he said, “and I think if we air on the greatest sense of urgency or emergency, then getting there and having the people with the medical training do that evaluation with a relative efficiency seems like a logical approach.” 

TJ Turner's official cause of death was “seizure disorder in the setting of complications of morbid obesity.” 

It’s unclear if a quicker response could have saved TJ Turner that morning. 

When asked whether seizure calls are being handled with the proper priority, CSFD responded with the following statement: 

“While we are saddened with the outcome for this patient and for his family, the CSFD is confident in our response based on the call determinant of 12B1, that was originally dispatched.  Many years of work has gone into the development of the CMED program and tedious analysis of all call types, response, and patient outcomes continuously occur to ensure that response resources and response times are appropriate.” 

The statement also defended the use of the CMED program to respond to less urgent calls. 

“With the rising call volume and population increase in our community it is our responsibility to ensure that we can respond to all calls in the most appropriate manner.  Further, when you take into consideration that 41% of the total medical call volume is low acuity in nature, applying a one size fits all response with a fire apparatus and ambulance code 3 with lights and sirens would be unnecessarily endangering our citizens and not providing the patients with the most appropriate care and response for that call and for the more critical and life threatening that may also occur.  We will continue to critique calls of this nature to determine if alternate resources should be dispatched or changes to our tiered response system should be made.” 

When asked if this incident had lead to any type of re-evaluation of calls, the spokesperson said the department did complete an after action review of CMED response for the fire department, and it “did not result in a change to the way we respond, the way we are dispatched, or what units respond to seizure calls. Our data review continues to prove that the CMED program is facilitating our EMS system's ability to provide the best response to, and treatment of, the greatest number of our citizens.” 

A survey of surrounding fire agencies resulted in mixed responses on how seizure calls are handled. 

In Pueblo and Monument, all seizure calls are treated as top priority emergencies, with an ambulance immediately dispatched. 

In Denver, it’s a similar tiered-response system as Colorado Springs. 

A spokesperson with Denver Fire told KRDO that in order for a seizure to be treated as non-emergent, “The patient needs to be no longer seizing and their breathing status confirmed to be effective, or it is a focal seizure and the patient is currently alert, or it is an impending seizure (patient feels a seizure coming on but has not seized yet).” 

If a seizure call meets the above criteria, it is handled by Denver Health, not Denver Fire.