By Nicholas Gilmore
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — The mother of a man who survived a suicide attempt in Santa Fe two years ago alleges in a new lawsuit the inaction of first responders led to irreparable brain damage for her son.
Gena Waterman, who filed her complaint last week in state District Court against the city of Santa Fe’s police and fire departments, accuses first responders of failing to act to save Jerome Tapia’s life until about two hours after he shot himself — even as officers kept his loved ones and other witnesses from accessing the scene while acknowledging he showed signs of life.
A city spokesperson declined to respond to the allegations in the lawsuit, citing a city policy against commenting on pending litigation.
The complaint seeks damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of consortium and loss of earnings and earning capacity.
Tapia is now blind and “totally incapacitated,” the lawsuit states, as a result of delayed medical care after sustaining a self-inflicted gunshot wound in September 2022.
Santa Fe attorney Marc Edwards, who is representing Waterman in the civil suit, said in a brief interview Monday, “The allegations in this complaint seem fictional, but I can assure you they are not.”
City police and emergency medical staff were dispatched to the shooting on Siler Park Lane around 4:30 a.m. Sept. 25, 2022, according to the lawsuit. Officers were told by witnesses at the scene Tapia, who was 18 at the time, had shot himself in the head.
Officers secured the scene with crime scene tape and blocked the entrance with a police vehicle, the lawsuit states. Paramedics arrived around 4:40 a.m.
Emergency medical personnel wrote in a report they could detect “agonal breathing” at a frequency of “approximately once every 20 to 30 seconds,” the lawsuit says, but police body camera video “clearly shows Mr. Tapia moving his head and that his breathing was rapid and not ‘agonal’ or ‘0' as documented by SFFD emergency medical personnel.”
Medical staff examined Tapia for about 31 seconds; despite having the field electrocardiogram out next to him, the lawsuit states, they did not use it. Less than two minutes after arriving at the scene, paramedics were packing the ambulance to leave, according to the complaint.
Paramedics “stated that Mr. Tapia was obviously dead and would not be transported,” the complaint alleges.
Within two minutes of the paramedics’ departure and for two hours afterward, the suit states, Tapia “exhibited obvious and undeniable signs of life,” including “rapid breathing, moving and at times flailing his arms, moaning, screaming, yelling noises, rolling onto his side and finally trying to push himself up at the end of this two-hour period.”
During this period, it adds, “SFPD body camera recordings show at least seven SFPD officers doing nothing other than watch and make comments to each other about Mr. Tapia’s moaning, movements and breathing.”
Tapia’s girlfriend, her parents and a friend “repeatedly told the officers that Mr. Tapia was moving and moaning and was still alive” from outside the taped-off crime scene, according to the lawsuit.
About one hour into the incident, an officer can be heard in video footage saying, “makes you think if he’s still, like, somewhat there,” the complaint says.
Still, the lawsuit alleges, the officers “did nothing other than rebuff civilian witnesses who wanted to aid Mr. Tapia .”
As the witnesses pleaded with them to help Tapia, “SFPD officers kept them away from him,” the complaint states.
Minutes later, Tapia can be heard in the footage “loudly moaning for well over four minutes,” and afterward, an officer says to others, “are the witnesses, like, in a vehicle, where they aren’t going to hear this?” according to the complaint.
Another officer responded, “They actually, they came out and said that he was alive and moving. I think we need to move them.”
The lawsuit says one officer could be heard shortly afterward saying, “There’s still some rise and fall of his abdomen — he’s a fighter.”
Finally, when Tapia “raised his head up and tried to get up on his own at approximately 6:20 a.m.,” the complaint says, police called medical responders back to the scene.
Paramedics took Tapia to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, and he was then airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital.
The lawsuit alleges city staff acted with negligence and violated Tapia’s civil rights; it argues the first responders’ actions during the call were “shocking to the conscience.”
The lawsuit states Tapia — who is now blind — can perform most daily life activities with assistance, and that his ability to verbally communicate his thoughts and feelings has improved with therapy. It says, however, a “critical threshold” of time was missed to render care to Tapia for improved neurological outcomes.
“It is a near-certainty, not just more likely than not, that Mr. Tapia suffered additional, unnecessary surrounding brain tissue damage in the ensuing, nearly two-hour delay,” the lawsuit says, arguing his life would be “dramatically different” had medical care been provided promptly after the shooting.
“City police officers and emergency medical personnel acted with deliberate indifference to Mr. Tapia’s serious medical needs, while simultaneously cutting off any source of private aid, thus enhancing the danger and risks that Mr. Tapia faced,” the lawsuit alleges.
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