*As it should have, the Memphis Fire Department announced three employees were fired over their response to the Tyre Nichols incident.
Emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker have been terminated, the fire department said (01-30-23).
The three were responding to a report of “a person pepper sprayed” when they arrived at the scene of the deadly beating and found Nichols on the ground, the fire department said.
The department’s investigation found that “the two EMTs responded based on the initial nature of the call and information they were told on the scene and failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment of Mr. Nichols,” the fire chief said.
Whitaker had remained in the fire truck, the department said.
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Pole-camera video released Friday showed that after the EMTs arrived and before the ambulance arrived, first responders repeatedly walked away from Nichols, with Nichols intermittently falling onto his side.
Additionally, two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office were put on leave last week pending an investigation, after video of the incident was released.
“I have concerns about two deputies who appeared on scene following the physical confrontation between police and Tyre Nichols,” Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. said Friday.
‘A gross collapse of the system’
After the fire department firings were announced Monday, an attorney for Tyre Nichols’ family, Antonio Romanucci said, “everybody on that scene was complicit in this man’s death, in one way, shape, form, or another, somebody failed Tyre Nichols.”
“They either failed by using excessive force; they failed him by severely beating him; they failed him by not intervening; they failed him by not rendering aid,” the attorney said Monday.
He said Nichols’ family still is trying to absorb the breadth of this multi-agency investigation, while also dealing with the loss of their loved one.
“This is just such a gross collapse of the system that we are supposed to trust, that it really is unspeakable,” Romanucci said.
