Nearly two years after a homeless man was transported from a warming center to a hospital by the Middletown Division of Fire and pronounced dead upon arrival, his family has sued the fire department, the city and the two paramedics who were in the ambulance.
The 50-page lawsuit was filed Jan. 18 in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
The incident began on March 7, 2022, when William “Billy” Jefferys, 47, who was staying in an emergency warming center funded by the city of Middletown, was suffering from an apparent drug overdose after showing “seizure-like” symptoms in a bathroom stall.
The warming center, since it didn’t have fire alarms, was staffed that day by Brent Hughes, a firefighter/paramedic who called for assistance. Middletown paramedics Brian Mariano and Kyle Baughman arrived, but failed to perform life-saving measures on Jefferys, according to the lawsuit reviewed by the Journal-News.
At the warming center, after other fire personnel had left, Baughman asked Mariano whether he wanted to perform any other care or assessments on Jefferys, including attaching an EKG to monitor his heart or starting an IV for the administration of fluids or medications.