An Ohio mom was left with brain damage after cops mistook her asthma attack for an opioid overdose — and administered Narcan instead of immediately responding to her breathing issues, her distraught family said.
Tammy Cione, 54, collapsed around 1 a.m. Oct. 14 — prompting her husband, Louis Cione, to frantically call for help, he told The Cincinnati Enquirer.
“I heard my wife fall,” he told the outlet. “I woke up, I grabbed her, I called my son [and] we laid her out on the floor. I told my son to call 911.”
The operator directed the family to perform CPR until police arrived, he said.
When a responding officer asked what drugs Tammy might be on, her son Matt responded that she wasn’t on anything and that she just collapsed, the paper reported.
Still, the officer administered Narcan, Louis Cione said.
“I just watched him and he was shaking her and shaking her and calling her name,” he told the outlet. “I told Matt, my son, ‘He’s not even doing CPR. He’s just calling her name and shaking her,’ so I stuck my head in, and I said, ‘Excuse me, do you know how to do CPR or do I need to help?’ I said I don’t know how, but I’ll help if I need to. He said, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’m getting a response, step out of the room, sir.'”
Medics arrived 10 minutes later — and Tammy was taken to the hospital where she was diagnosed with an asthma attack, which prompted respiratory failure, and then cardiac arrest, the family said.
Chief Jeff Bachman of the Pierce Township Police Department told the paper his officers did nothing wrong and may have even saved the woman’s life. The officer used two rounds of Narcan and then performed CPR for 7 or 8 minutes until the fire department arrived, he said.
But the family said the cops should have performed CPR sooner.
“If he would have done chest compressions instead of shaking her then I think she would have been OK,” Louis Cione told the outlet.
“The time that she went without oxygen actually caused the brain injury,” said Heather Matson, Cione’s daughter.
“I feel like because of the heroin epidemic they’re starting to make assumptions,” Matson told the paper. “I know she’s not the only one and I’m afraid she won’t be the last one. I think going into it with the assumption that it’s an overdose sets up failure for anything else.”
Matson posted a Facebook photo of her father alongside her mom in the hospital.
“My dad does not leave her side,” she wrote. “We will not know what the extent of the damage is for months. This could have been avoided had it not been treated as an overdose.”
