EXCLUSIVE: EMS chief promoted despite suit over death

EXCLUSIVE:

D.C. fire officials promoted an internal candidate to lead their troubled emergency medical services division knowing that their choice to institute agency reforms was himself facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for wrongful death and medical malpractice.

Rafael Sa’adah was named assistant chief for EMS on March 29, more than three months after he was cleared in an internal departmental investigation of having mishandled the case but four days before the city’s inspector general informed Chief Sa’adah that he had been unable to substantiate the complaint during a second investigation.

The city officials also were notified late last year that a D.C. emergency medical technician planned to sue the city, charging that Chief Sa’adah had mishandled the response to her son’s fatal shooting in August.

The lawsuit, filed last week in D.C. Superior Court, seeks $10 million from the District and Chief Sa’adah in his personal and professional capacities for medical malpractice and wrongful death, among other things.

Tonda Wright, who has worked for the D.C. fire department since 2001, filed the lawsuit on behalf of her son, Johnquan Wright. Mr. Wright, 18, and another man were shot in the unit block of K Street in Northwest on Aug. 14. Mr. Wright died from his wounds.

The lawsuit charges that Chief Sa’adah thought Mr. Wright had been shot in the head and ordered emergency workers to stop treating him, thinking he was dead. The complaint says an autopsy revealed Mr. Wright had not been shot in the head and that the gunshot wounds were to his torso and leg.

Chief Sa’adah did not respond to an e-mail from The Washington Times and declined to comment on the incident through Deputy Chief Kenneth Crosswhite, a department spokesman.

Reached by phone, Ms. Wright referred questions about the lawsuit to her attorney, Stephen S. Millstein, who declined to comment. A scheduling conference in the case has been set for Aug. 28.

City Attorney General Peter J. Nickles provided documents to The Times that indicate the department’s medical director, Dr. James J. Augustine, reviewed the case last year.

“It was determined that the care of the victims was appropriate, according to the protocols of the department,” Mr. Nickles said.

Mr. Nickles also forwarded to The Times a copy of a letter from D.C. Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby, who looked into the incident and wrote to Chief Sa’adah that investigators “have not found evidence to substantiate” charges that he prohibited emergency workers from attending to Mr. Wright. The letter was dated April 2.

The department’s Web site says Chief Sa’adah was appointed as full-time assistant chief for EMS on March 29, four days earlier.

The lawsuit argues that “the gunshot wounds suffered” by Mr. Wright “were life-threatening, but there was a chance of survival had the decedent received appropriate and immediate emergency medical care and attention and immediately [been] transported to a health care facility for life-saving care.” It says the response by Chief Sa’adah violated department protocols and procedures, and it cites recent fire department special orders that tell medics that any victims who have “penetrating wounds” in the torso should be treated and transported with an advanced life-support response. According to the complaint, another order says medics should not stop CPR in the field for patients suffering from acute traumatic injury.

“Providers are to notify the receiving facility that they are en route and are not to cease transporting under any circumstances,” the order says, according to the complaint.

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