When her 2-year-old daughter experienced cardiac arrest, Andrea Feeley thought a call to 911 would help. While the mother reportedly sat helplessly waiting for an ambulance to arrive at her Winthrop, Massachusetts home, she had no idea it would never show up. The city uses a private firm to contract ambulance service, and it was busy that day.
Instead, firefighters arrived and tried to help, but they couldn’t revive little Yuna Feeley. She ultimately died.
Nearly a year later, Feeley still grapples with understanding how her toddler’s life hung in the balance but she couldn’t get the professional care she needed.
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Yuna was very sick.
Her mother explained to the Boston Globe that the little girl had come home from day care two days earlier with a fever, but her symptoms didn’t seem serious. On the morning of January 26, 2024, that changed. Yuna went from lethargic to limp as her mother tried to get her to take a drink.
Feeley’s son called 911, and they waited for an ambulance. Within minutes, Winthrop firefighters arrived and began chest compressions, but there wasn’t an ambulance in sight.
Feeley said, “I just kept asking, ‘What’s going on? Is she breathing? Is the ambulance coming?'”
Firefighters did their best to help.
According to the Globe, it was quickly evident they needed the advanced training of paramedics and an ambulance. “Better step up that ambulance,” Captain Dan Flynn radioed.
As the minutes continued to pass and an ambulance never arrived, Fire Chief Scott Wiley put Yuna into his Chevy Tahoe with two firefighters and rushed her to Massachusetts General Hospital. Tragically, Yuna died.
Some say Yuna's death was a result of inadequate infrastructure.
According to NBC 10, the entire state of Massachusetts is under stress from a fractured system. The state often operates at a “Level Zero” when there is a critical need but no one to respond.
“Our largest worry is that those truly life-threatening cases, we might not have a resource available,” Action Ambulance CEO and President Michael Woronka told NBC 10.
Woronka, who has worked as a first responder for nearly 40 years, said low pay and increased calls contribute to the issue. “The entire system,” he said, “it’s not just at a breaking point. It is breaking as we are watching this unfold in front of us right now.”
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Feeley can't help but think her daughter should still be alive.
According to the Globe, the mother received an autopsy report listing her cause of death as “necrotizing pneumonia in the setting of RSV and strep.”
“If an ambulance had come, could they have intubated her?” Feeley asked the newspaper. “Could they have given her something? What if there was something on the ambulance that they could have done?”
Wiley agreed.
“Maybe having an ambulance wouldn’t have made a difference, but it would’ve given her a better shot,” he said. “We’re all parents. Some of us are grandparents. It’s devastating. It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a horrible, horrible thing.”
