New Information, 911 Tapes Released In Miami Beach Man's Death
MIAMI BEACH (CBS4) - Miami Beach Police Raymond Martinez says he is troubled by a dispatcher's behavior in the moments after a woman called 911 for help on March 5th.
Records show firefighter paramedics did not reach her home on Venetian Islands until 31 minutes after her call.
Martinez told CBS4's Peter D'Oench that the dispatcher, Damian Janee, tried to cover up a mistake that lead to a 14-minute delay in the dispatch of Fire Rescue 65-year-old Michael Lubin.
Lubin was pronounced dead three minutes after fire rescue arrived.
As Martinez spoke, new 911 tapes were released of the call from Roseanne Lubin. The tapes showed that time was of the essence. Lubin had fallen twice in two days.
A dispatcher is heard asking: "What is the problem?"
"My husband fell yesterday," says Roseanne Lubin. "I thought he was ok. He can't move out of bed and I just left for five minutes and he's on the floor and he can't move."
Lubin tells Janee she is worried about her husband, who had complications from Crohn's disease.
The dispatcher asks "How far did he fall? From a standing position?"
Roseanne Lubin replies, "No, from the bed. He doesn't even know if he fell. But we have tile floor."
"Any part of the body hurt?" asks the dispatcher.
"Yes," says Lubin. "Everything. Everything. From the fall yesterday. And he's been having trouble all night trying to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. Everything. There is no way I can move him. I understand."
The dispatcher says, "Please don't give him anything to eat or drink and whatever medication he's taking have it ready for when rescue arrives they can see everything that he's taking."
Chief Martinez says steps have been taken to fire Janee after he delayed the dispatch of fire rescue. He is relieved of duty with pay and could be fired after a hearing on May 7th, Martinez said.
"He never raises rescue 22 on the radio and never verbally dispatches them to the call which is protocol," Martinez told D'Oench.
It caused a huge problem.
"The concern is that there was a significant delay in dispatching the call of 14 minutes," said Martinez. "We don't know what happened or why the dispatch did not occur right away. But what compounded the issue it is that he made a note at 927 a.m. that rescue was enroute to make it appear that the dispatch was on time which was a falsification of what occurred."
"It's something egregious and will not be tolerated," he said. "We don't know the circumstances of the delay. But it's troubling to us. We want to make sure that every aspect is ok to protect the 911 system," Martinez said.
"We want to protect it for our citizens and visitors to Miami Beach," he said.
Miami Beach Police Sergeant Bobby Hernandez told D'Oench, "We have 800,000 calls a year to our Public Safety Communications system. This was an isolated incident. But we want to make sure this never happens again."
"This dispatcher lied to cover up his mistake," said Hernandez.
