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ACCIDENT

Ignored ambulance call fatality ‘a tragedy’

The nurse who refused to send an ambulance to a 23-year-old Stockholm man who later died had been reported several times prior to the incident.

Published: 21 April 2011 16:13 CEST
Ignored ambulance call fatality 'a tragedy'

“Help me,” 23-year-old Emil Linnell can be heard saying repeatedly in recordings of his January 30th call to SOS Alarm, Sweden’s emergency response service.

According to Sveriges Television (SVT), the nurse who took Linnell’s call had several years of experience in the healthcare sector and had worked as an emergency call operator for more than a year.

During his time on the job, however, the nurse had been reported for a number of failings in his work, referred to as deviations from standard procedures.

“The majority of the mistake rests with one person,” SOS Alarm spokesperson Fredrik Bergengård told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

Linnell made several calls to SOS Alarm complaining of breathing trouble, but the on-call nurse deemed his condition not to be life-threatening.

The transcript of the communication between the nurse and the man shows that he pleaded ‘help me’ repeatedly on the phone to SOS Alarm but was ignored.

According to the transcript the nurse said he couldn’t really understand what Linnell’s problem was. He said that Linnell was ‘running about the flat’ with no ‘apparent problem breathing or speaking’.

But Linnell persisted in saying he couldn’t breathe.

“I know, but I have been sitting here listening to you. You are breathing fine now,“ the nurse answered.

“No, I am fainting! I’m fainting,” he said.

“Take a deep breath now,” the nurse urged.

“I can’t! Please help me! Please! Help me,“ pleaded Linnell.

A little later he said, “I can’t breathe” again.

“You are breathing fine. I promise you,” the nurse then answered him.

The call then finished with a wheezing noise followed by a crash. Two hours later a neighbour found Linnell dead by the open door.

No ambulance was ever sent, and it was later determined Linnell died from a ruptured spleen.

“The whole incident is a tragedy and we are deeply grieved with what happened,” SOS Alarm CEO Johan Hedensjö said in a statement.

According to Hedensjö, SOS Alarm is assisting the police and the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) in their investigations. The nurse who took the call has since been dismissed from duty.

Filippa Reinfeldt, wife of Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and county council chair, described the incident as a ‘great tragedy’, which must be investigated thoroughly by both the National Board of Health and Welfare and prosecutors.

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ACCIDENT

Cable car survivor must be returned to family in Italy, Israel court rules

An Israeli court ruled Monday that a boy whose parents died in an Italian cable car crash be returned to family in Italy, after his grandfather was accused of illegally bringing him to Israel.

Published: 25 October 2021 17:39 CEST
Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021
Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The battle for custody of Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the May accident that killed 14 people, has captured headlines since his maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, brought him to Israel on a private jet last month.

The child lost his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents in the May 23 accident near the top of the Mottarone mountain in the northwestern Piedmont region, where the family was out on a Sunday excursion to the scenic spot served by the cable car.

The cable car’s pull cable snapped just before it reached destination. It then flew backwards, dislodging itself from a second, supporting cable, and crashed to the ground.

Investigations later revealed that emergency brakes that could have stopped the car on its supporting cable, avoiding the tragedy, had been deliberately deactivated to avoid delays following a technical malfunction.

Three individuals responsible for the cable car’s management were subsequently arrested.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

Peleg has insisted that he drove Eitan from Italy to Switzerland before jetting him back to Israel – instead of returning him paternal aunt Aya Biran, who lives in northern Italy – because Eitan’s late parents wanted him to be raised in the Jewish state.

But Peleg has become the subject kidnapping probe by Italian prosecutors and Israeli police questioned him over those allegations last month.

A statement Monday from the Tel Aviv court where Aya Biran had filed a complaint said judges “did not accept the grandfather’s claim that the aunt has no custody rights”.

It recognised an Italian judgement that established Biran as a legitimate guardian and said Peleg had “unlawfully” removed the boy from his aunt’s care.

The court “ordered the return of the minor to his usual place of residence in Italy”.

The court also found that “a connection” between the surviving members of the Italy- and Israel-based relatives was in Eitan’s “best interests”.

Peleg was also ordered to pay Biran’s legal fees, amounting to 70,000 shekels ($22,000).

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Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021.

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The case has stirred emotions in Israel, and throngs of journalists had surrounded the Tel Aviv court for hearings last month, with some pro-Peleg protesters insisting it was wrong to send a Jewish child out of Israel.

Before judges ordered the sides to stop talking to the media, Peleg told Israel’s Channel 12 in September that his grandson was “in the place where he is supposed to be, in his home, in Israel.”

Eitan and his parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg, had been living in Italy, where Amit Biran was studying medicine, together with their other child, Tom.

Eitan suffered severe chest and abdominal injuries and spent a week in intensive care after the May accident that occurred when a cable snapped on the aerial tram bringing weekend visitors to the top of the Piedmont region’s Mottarone mountain.

The accident was one of Italy’s worst in over two decades.   

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