Father in wheelchair waited for hours in Atlanta street after falling from MARTA bus, daughter says

ATLANTA — April Jordan says her 72-year-old father is now confined to a Grady Hospital bed, after lying in the middle of a hot Atlanta street for three hours.

“He was like can you call 911, April I’m stuck out here,” said Jordan.

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Jordan told Channel 2 Action News’s Ashli Lincoln that she received a frantic phone call from her dad after he fell out of a MARTA bus while in his wheelchair.

“He was on his back,” she said.

She says he told her the MARTA driver lifted the ramp prematurely, causing him to roll out. She says the driver stayed with her father and called 911. But after several hours of waiting, first responders had still not shown up.

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“He’s calling me crying saying that he’s in the middle of the street in Atlanta,” she said.

In a 911 call that Channel 2 obtained from the City of Atlanta Police Department, you can hear an Atlanta 911 dispatcher transfer the call to Grady. A Grady dispatcher is heard getting information from the MARTA driver. The calls ends with the dispatcher telling her help is on the way.

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Grady released the following statement:

Per our CAD system, after completion of the emergency medical dispatching questions, this call was coded as low level due to the patient’s symptoms reported by the patient and bystanders. Dispatch made contact multiple times after the initial call and no changes in symptoms were noted. The call was later upgraded based on additional information and possible changes in the patient’s symptoms. At that time, a unit was dispatched and was on the scene within minutes. Grady EMS arrived on scene and Atlanta Fire and MARTA Police Department were on scene and the patient was sitting in a wheelchair inside of the MARTA bus. The patient was transported to Grady per his request.

In a statement, MARTA said:

Bus Communications received a call in reference to a injured customer at 8:39 p.m. on Friday July 8th. A Bus Supervisor was immediately dispatched to the scene and M ARTA Police were called to request assistance and to contact EMS. At 9 p.m., the Bus Supervisor asked for an ETA on EMS and was advised that Grady response times were delayed. Per Bus Communications, it took approximately two hours for EMS and the Fire Department to arrive on scene. The call was cleared at 11:45 p.m.

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