EMT Gets Prison After Defibrillator Prank Kills Co-Worker

This story should be relayed in every EMT training class for the rest of eternity.

You made a good suggestion there.

A MD told me once that guys do not have full cognitive ability much before 30yrs of age. That, coupled with a real big impulse control problem and....OK, you're right, there is no explanation for this action.

How horrid! True, he definitely should have known better. Maybe he figured since his prank victim was as young as him that it wouldn't hurt, (you know us younger people, we're going to live forever). I don't know. If it was me, just the thought that I had taken a life with my own stupidity would cause me such anguish and pain that there is nothing they could sentence me to that would be worse. I would rather be dead or locked away forever so that no one would see me ever again. I really don't think I'd be able to face anyone after that. So, whatever he gets, he definitely deserves, but I believe that his own guilt will be more than enough torture.

That's weird. We were trained on them in CPR/BLS, I would think you would need to be CPR/BLS certified to even be an EMT student?

wow...the sequence of events are incredibly disturbing; she got shocked, yelled she got shocked, went stiff, and died 3 days later; the visual image makes me cringe; hopefully it will be even more vivid for him

I wonder at what point reality set in and his childish, playful giggling ended?

IMO his punishment should have been death.

It is as simple as this:

Don't we learn as children how dangerous electricity is? Don't stick your finger in the socket. Don't touch open wires. Can't no one here tell me that thruout his entire primary education (math, science, history) classes that he has never heard of this. 25 and never hearing of fallen power lines, lightening strikes, loose wires, broken light bulbs???? He never seen a movie, TV show, the news making reference to any of this. Come on. My 9 year old sister knows better.

In addition to that he went into the medical field. He thought it was toys on the EMS truck? Seriously?? He knew it delivered shocks. He just didn't know how much. With BLS which I am sure he had, teaches what an AED is. He knew what the word defibrillate meant. To my understanding he knows from he EMT A&P course that the heart has a normal electrical conduction pathway. If he took the class and passed the test he knew. Even if he didn't have the knowledge..common sense please?? Common sense is why he didn't use it on himself.

Isn't everyone trained to use the AED when they get certified as a health care worker for CPR? Even though I'm not trained to use paddle defibrillators, I still figured with common sense that anything that uses strong electric jolts is not something I would play with as a toy...