A 52-year-old Unemployment Relief Programme worker from Tobago has died after collapsing outside his Pleasant Prospect home, with his grieving widow claiming the tragedy could have been avoided if emergency medical services had provided an ambulance when she first called for help.
Patsy King-Roach, the man’s wife, spoke exclusively to the Express on Wednesday, sharing the harrowing details of the incident that unfolded on Tuesday shortly before 7 p.m. According to King-Roach, her husband Densil had just finished helping deliver a water shipment to their property when he suddenly fell to the ground near their water storage tank. When she reached him after rushing down her home’s steps, he had already stopped responding to her calls and questions.
Trapped with an unresponsive husband, King-Roach cried out for assistance from nearby family members. Her uncle and two other relatives quickly arrived on scene to help, but none of the small group were able to lift Densil or revive him. The family immediately began placing urgent calls for an ambulance, only to receive the devastating news that no emergency vehicle was available to dispatch to their location. Their next call to the local Fire Service yielded the same result: no ambulance was on standby to respond. Desperate, the family contacted police, who agreed to coordinate with the island’s Emergency Health Services (EHS) to secure transport.
By the time an ambulance finally arrived at the King-Roach home, more than 30 minutes had passed. When medics arrived, they confirmed Densil had already passed away. A local district medical officer has since listed his cause of death as a suspected heart attack. King-Roach remains convinced that even a small reduction in response time could have saved her husband’s life. “If they had come there on time, the time when we call even self if they had come ten minutes, five minutes, he would have been alive…even though he was not talking he would have been stable, he would have been alive,” she said.
The loss has left the family shattered: the couple’s seven-year-old son continues to repeatedly ask for his father, and King-Roach says the traumatic circumstances of her husband’s death will stay with her forever. In response to the public allegations, the Emergency Health Services has launched a formal internal investigation to determine why no ambulance was available to respond to the family’s urgent request on Tuesday evening.