NEW ORLEANS -- When a bullet pierced Sterling Everidge’s neck in September 2014, he lay on the floor at a house party on Annette Street bleeding while a New Orleans EMS unit waited around the corner for 10 minutes before going in to help him. The paramedics in that ambulance were following the standard practice of waiting for police to secure the scene before rushing in to provide emergency medical care.
New Orleans police didn’t arrive until 35 minutes after the first call to 911.
“One bullet messed up his whole life,” said Rebecca Everidge, Sterling’s wife.
The night of the shooting was the couple’s first night out in four months following the birth of their fifth child, a fifth baby boy. They went to a birthday party for Sterling’s sister. Loud music played, lots of people talked, only Sterling couldn’t hear any of it. He was born deaf.
Code 4
After visiting with Sterling’s sister and hanging out at the party for a couple of hours, the Everidges decided to make their way home. On their way out the door, Rebecca said a man shoved his way back into the party.
”A dude ran back in and was like, move out the way… they got a gun! Move! Move! They got a gun,” she said.
Sterling couldn't hear the gunshots. Rebecca said everybody ducked, but when they all got up, Sterling didn't. He had fallen head first onto the hard floor.
“I'm like, you shot? I'm signing to him, I'm like, you shot? You shot? He's like, yeah. I'm like, where? In the arm? In the chest? He was like, in the neck. In his neck,” Rebecca said.
911 got the call about the shooting at 1:37 a.m. Police say an officer got to the scene 35 minutes later.
New Orleans EMS got there at 1:44 a.m., but waited around the corner.
“The ambulance is parked on the corner but they don't want to come in. I’m like, why they don't want to come in? Because they needed the OK,” Rebecca said.
“If you go in without a ‘code 4’ from NOPD, you're basically taking your life into your own hands if you don't wait for police to secure the scene,” said Dan Flynn, a New Orleans EMS paramedic on the reality TV show “Nightwatch” on A&E.
An episode of the show titled “Officer Down” featured a scene where Flynn and another paramedic were waiting for police at one of three violent scenes that night.
Rebecca Everidge remembers seeing EMS parked nearby.
“They sat there for about 15 to 20 minutes before they came into my husband to see about my husband,” Rebecca said.
According to New Orleans EMS, their crew ended up going in to get Sterling at 1:54 a.m., 10 minutes after getting to the scene. In all, Sterling Everidge lay bleeding on the floor for at least 17 minutes until help arrived.
“I don't know what to think. All I see is beaucoup blood leaking out in front of him,” Rebecca said.
Had paramedics waited on an official ‘code 4’ from police, where police declare the scene secure, they would have been sitting around the corner even longer.
Police didn't call the scene secure until 2:15 a.m.
NOPD response time: 35 minutes
Police eventually interviewed Rebecca Everidge at the hospital. That’s when they realized the three suspects in Everidge's shooting had left the party and headed to Gene's Po-Boys on Rampart Street.
There they allegedly opened fire on New Orleans police officer Jonathan Smith, shooting him three times.
“When we're talking life or death situations, seconds do matter,” said Arthur Lewis, the Louisiana coordinator for trauma standards training, called pre-hospital trauma life support, or PHTLS.
When asked if a minute or two will make a difference in whether or not someone lives or dies, Lewis said, “In most situations, the answer would probably be no. But there would be situations where, for example, somebody has a really bad bleed, so seconds is of the essence.”
WWL-TV examined millions of calls for service records with our partners at the New Orleans Advocate and found the average time it takes New Orleans police to respond to emergency calls has doubled since 2010 from nearly 10 minutes to nearly 20.
Both police and EMS said they don't track how often paramedics have to wait for police to secure the scene, or what that average wait time is.
EMS response
We requested the same calls for service data from EMS to crunch their response times, but the city refused to release the data for large periods of time.
They did release response information on shootings for a few select months, but not enough to make an accurate assessment. And many of the calls for service records they did provide were missing the time that paramedics first made contact with the patient, a possible indicator of how long it took, on average, for police to secure the scene.
Anecdotally, a former paramedic with New Orleans EMS named Eric Stapelton told the New Orleans Advocate that in his experience, most of the time, EMS arrived before police.
“If it’s a shooting, we’re supposed to wait until police show up. That’s the one time every cop will show up, all the big wigs, all the higher ups will show up. But for other scenes that might be dangerous, if the cameras aren’t there, people don’t show up as fast. It’s about 75 percent of the time we show up before they do,” Stapelton said.
WWL-TV also asked to ride along with an ambulance or put a small camera in one, and while the reality show does it regularly, the city denied the request, citing concerns about patient confidentiality and safety.
New Orleans EMS tracks how often they arrive at the scene within 12 minutes to gauge what the industry calls response time compliance. In 2010, they met that nationally-recognized 12-minute benchmark 77 percent of the time. Over the past five years, that percentage has gone up and down. In 2014, it climbed up to 80 percent.
Private ambulance providers in Memphis and San Diego have been fined for response times that were faster than those clocked by New Orleans EMS in recent years. In fact, most ambulance providers are expected to get to trauma scenes in 12 minutes 90 percent of the time.
The 80 percent response time compliance calculation for New Orleans EMS doesn’t include incidents where no one is taken to the hospital, like for example, if someone is shot and instead of waiting on an ambulance, they are driven to the hospital in someone’s car.
New Orleans EMS would not talk to us for this story.
Lewis said even more important is the amount of time paramedics spend at the scene of a trauma.
“The national standard is what's called a platinum 10 minutes,” Lewis said.
New Orleans EMS would only say that they have spent less than 10 minutes at the scene of “major trauma calls” 90 percent of the time so far this year.
Remembering everything
When asked if he remembers that night, the party, the shooting, the pain, the wait, Sterling Everidge mouthed the word “everything.”
When his wife Rebecca asks him about the pain and rubs his chest at the cruel line where his sensations start to soften, he winces.
Because Sterling is paralyzed, sign language is almost impossible for him. Almost.
“He mouth the words and he signs sometimes. He can move his left arm so good to where I can understand what he's saying,” Rebecca said.
They will never know if his injuries would be less severe if help had arrived sooner. They're thankful for the help he got and they know he's lucky to be alive.
Because money's tight, Sterling stopped going to therapy for a while, depending instead on his wife to help him stretch and gain strength.
“He improve every day, wiggle toes, wiggle fingers,” Rebecca said.
They're hopeful time will now work on their side, bringing progress, so that one day their five sons will get to see their father the way he used to be, the way he wants to be remembered.
New Orleans police didn’t want to do an interview for this story about the department’s code 4 times, but instead pointed to changes Superintendent Michael Harrison has made to improve response times, including taking minor crime reports by phone, and the reassignment of traffic officers to ease the burden on the district officers, allowing them to focus on more serious crimes.