Elmhurst Mayor Confirms Key Part Of Resident's Story

Elmhurst IL

17 May, 2021

8:00 AM

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ELMHURST, IL — A short-lived Elmhurst policy meant that fire trucks did not automatically respond to "difficulty breathing" calls for a while in 2015, Elmhurst Mayor Scott Levin said late last week. It was reversed after the death of 13-year-old Annie LeGere, he said. In an email to Patch on Friday, Levin said the city's response to LeGere the night of Aug. 18, 2015, did not in any way impact her outcome. In an interview in March, LeGere's mother, Shelly LeGere, told Patch that the city stopped having fire trucks respond to emergency medical service calls shortly before the 2015 tragedy. She said the decision was in the interest of saving on the trucks' wear and tear. That policy was ended, she said, after her daughter's death. Annie LeGere died of a serve allergic reaction at a slumber party. Her mother later formed the Annie LeGere Foundation, which, among other things, offered to pay for equipping city fire trucks with advanced life support equipment. Patch has struggled to get information from the city about its 2015 policy. It filed a public records request March 25 for documents related to the policy in question. Yet Patch received nothing until after Levin took office. He replaced Steve Morley, who did not run again. Under state law, the city was required to respond within five business days or seek an extension. Instead, it took 29 business days for an answer. That was unusual for the city, which typically follows state deadlines under the open records law. In response to the request, the city provided vague emails exchanged between two fire department officials about "adding the truck back to the response." City officials also declined to respond to two Patch emails since March about the existence of the 2015 policy. Levin, a longtime alderman who became mayor May 3, detailed the city's 2015 policy in an email to Patch on Friday. In 2015, the fire department reviewed its response protocols to both fire and emergency medical service calls at its staff meetings, which included all officers and the chief paramedic, Levin said. At that time, in response to "difficulty breathing" calls, an ambulance and a fire truck, each with two personnel, were sent, he said. "As part of the review of 'difficulty breathing' calls, it was determined that on a majority of the calls the truck was ordered to return to the station before arriving on scene because the paramedics determined they could handle the call without the firefighters," Levin said. "The Fire Department decided initially to have only paramedics respond to a 'difficulty breathing' call, who could then request assistance if they felt it was needed." Also, the dispatcher could initially choose to send a truck based on an assessment of the call, the mayor said. Because of the policy, the August 2015 call for Annie LeGere resulted in only an ambulance going, he said. "When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics immediately requested a fire truck to assist," Levin said. "Due to the nature of the call and the patient's condition, the paramedics determined the best response was to have a police officer drive the ambulance to the hospital rather than wait for the truck to arrive." The mayor said the fire department does not seek or obtain City Council approval for its response procedures. The procedures or orders are dictated by the fire department's command staff and entered into a channel guide that is programmed into the computers at the dispatch center, he said. In the March interview, Shelly LeGere, a registered nurse for 30 years, said a police officer asked whether she would drive the ambulance. She said she did not know how and was in no state to drive any vehicle at that point. She said the police officer drove the ambulance and that she sat next to him. "Everything was delayed," LeGere said. "The police officer did nothing wrong. He was relatively new at the time. I'm sure he'll never forget that night." The public records request included a report that indicated an officer drove the ambulance. But a city spokeswoman in March said, "Under no circumstances would a police officer or firefighter ask a civilian to operate the ambulance." For six decades, the city has employed an ambulance company, Metro Paramedic Services, a subsidiary of Superior Ambulance, to handle emergency medical calls. The fire department oversees the contract.