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.
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.
“This entire tragedy was avoidable had the AMR personnel provided him with the supplemental oxygen he needed,” Schwarz said, adding that Coleman’s panicked state should have indicated to any trained EMT that this was a normal reaction under circumstances where someone is gasping for breath.
According to the complaint, it was close to 2 a.m. on Nov. 30, 2023, when EMTs were dispatched to a call Coleman made complaining of shortness of breath and other symptoms. He requested an ambulance transport him to a hospital.
When EMTs arrived and met him on a street corner, they put Coleman in the ambulance. As Kuntz assessed him, Green says his father grew “agitated because of his inability to breathe” and told Kuntz and the other present EMTs repeatedly that he could not breathe.
Coleman then grabbed Kuntz by the arm in “a moment of desperate panic,” the lawsuit states.
This interaction prompted the EMT to stop treating Green’s father and instead, call the Rochester Police Department and claim that Coleman had tried to hurt Kuntz.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him but he will not get out of our truck and he’s gotta go,” Kuntz told the police, the lawsuit alleges.
A police officer ordered Coleman out of the ambulance but Coleman begged for help, telling the officer that he was struggling to breathe and needed urgent care. Body camera footage from the Rochester Police and first published by local NBC affiliate WHEC in January captured Coleman removing himself from the ambulance without assistance and saying that he was trying to grab onto a door, not the EMT, since he was in a panic.
“I was freaking out, you would freak out too if you couldn’t breathe,” Coleman told one of the police officers who responded to the EMT’s call for help.
Green said his father remained in “obvious physical distress” once he was out of the ambulance, and he was still struggling to breathe. But Coleman was told by an officer to sit down on a bench on the sidewalk. Moments later Coleman collapsed face down on the ground. He laid there for three minutes, according to the civil complaint, before a single police officer checked him and discovered he had no pulse.
Attempts were made to resuscitate him for nearly 15 minutes until finally he was given oxygen and then sent to Rochester General Hospital. He never regained consciousness and his family alleges that it was in this window that Coleman suffered permanent brain damage.
Coleman was on life support and on doctor’s orders, he was removed from it on Dec. 15, 2023, and died.
A spokesperson for the City of Rochester said the city cannot comment on active litigation and AMR did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime.
Some members of the crew involved in the Coleman call were put on administrative leave after the incident first occurred and according to more recent reporting by WHEC, one of the EMTs has been fired.
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