`Mishaps` by EMTs Blamed in Bronx Woman`s Death

Kacahie Roopa, 57, died after a first 911 call was ignored, and a second one had to be made, her family charges in court documents filed at Bronx Supreme Court.

EMTs on the ambulance that finally did arrive, failed to carry her down an inside set of stairs, then ran out of oxygen, and waited for another ambulance to arrive with more oxygen before taking their patient to St. Barnabas Hospital, the family charges. Roopa died two days later.

Her family is seeking to have the tapes of the 911 call and conversations between EMTs and dispatchers preserved for a wrongful-death suit before the city automatically destroys them.

Roopa complained of shortness of breath Feb. 8 and family members dialed 911 from their East 184th Street home, but say they were forced to call again.

"When it was time for her to be taken to the ambulance, the medical emergency technicians refused to put my mother on a gurney or a chair and directed my mother to walk down the stairs," Roopa's daughter, Deomattie Matto, says in court papers.

While her mother was in the ambulance, one of the EMTs told her sister-in-law they had "run out of oxygen." They waited a "substantial period of time," for a second ambulance to arrive with oxygen before the first one took Roopa to the hospital, Matto says.

"My family has been advised that while en route to the hospital my mother suffered a heart attack and a tube was placed down her throat to assist her breathing," Matto says. "On February 10, 2005, she was pronounced dead."

A city legal spokeswoman would not comment on a "pending legal matter."