Local traffic camera footage captures now-deceased Julian Coleman laying with face down on sidewalk after being removed from ambulance in Rochester, New York, November 2023 (YouTube screengrab/WROC).
Julian Coleman, 48, could not breathe when he was aboard an ambulance last year in New York and according to a newly-filed lawsuit from his family, instead of helping to save Coleman’s life, EMTs in Rochester called police, ordered him off the ambulance while he gasped for air and then left him to die on a sidewalk.
The stark allegations are laid out in a civil complaint filed by Julian Green, Coleman’s son, and it names National Ambulance and Oxygen Service Inc. dba American Medical Response, individual EMTs Nicole Kuntz and Melanie Torres, paramedic and supervisor Gregory Smith, the city of Rochester, New York, and individual Rochester police officers Christopher Morales, Jonathan Nettnin, Adam White and Nicholas Gifford.
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The lawsuit alleges negligence , wrongful death, multiple violations of Coleman’s Fourteenth Amendment rights. Green, who is one of four of Coleman’s children, seeks compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial. His attorney Stephen Schwarz told Law&Crime in an email Tuesday that none of this would have happened had EMTs provided Coleman with the care he needed.