'Everything he did made it worse'

SAMARITAN CLAIMS: Driver and passengers told heart-attack victim to get off bus

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.html?id=4b6e08c5-49ad-47c0-a334-fce7324bfd2c

Ethan Baron / ebaron@png.canwest.com
The Province / Sunday, July 24, 2005

A Vancouver bus driver tried to force from his bus an elderly man suffering a heart attack, an outraged Good Samaritan says.

"I thought I was in some parallel universe, where people just don't care about each other," said Jacqui, who didn't want her last name used because of business concerns.

Kamyen Cheng, 83, was riding the No. 19 bus from Chinatown to his Killarney home Tuesday afternoon when he slumped over with chest pains.

At the stop for Mount St. Joseph Hospital, Cheng's wife Lin, 74, told the driver they needed to go to the hospital but Cheng couldn't walk, Jacqui said.

"The driver was like, 'Well, what do you want me to do? You need to get off,'" Jacqui said.

The Chinese-speaking Lin began to panic as the driver told her to call 911, get a wheelchair from the hospital or exit the bus, Jacqui said.

Not wanting to leave her collapsed husband, Lin used a woman's cellphone to call 911, but because her English was poor, Jacqui took the phone. The 911 operator told her Cheng could go into cardiac arrest if he was moved, and that an ambulance would be sent, she said.

Then two other passengers began complaining, she said.

"They were saying, 'Get him off the bus, we have places to go,'" she said.

The driver joined in, saying, "Come on, we have to get him off the bus," she said. "He knew that we had called an ambulance."

The man continued yelling at her as she talked to the 911 operator, she said.

Lin, distressed by the angry comments, finally said she'd give Cheng his heart medicine and the bus could go, so the driver left the hospital stop. Jacqui told the 911 operator to redirect the ambulance to the Fraser Street-Kingsway stop. When the bus stopped, Jacqui demanded the bus stay put, and the same passengers started complaining again.

She asked one man if he wanted to be responsible if Cheng died.

"He said, 'I don't care, I'll carry him off the bus myself.'"

The driver then told her his shift was over, and he and other passengers had "places to go," she said.

"Everything he did made it worse," she said.

Cheng, whose heart attack was confirmed at Vancouver General Hospital, was discharged Friday and is recovering at home.

Doctors were appalled to hear of the bus incident, said Cheng's son, Allan.

"The doctors were like, 'What? The bus driver just kept going?'

"I'm really choked. If my mom says '911,' there's not an English barrier. The ambulance cannot be chasing the bus down."

Allan credits Jacqui's help for saving his father's life.

"If she wasn't there, my dad wouldn't be here," he said.

Jacqui filed a complaint against the driver, as has the Cheng family.

Coast Mountain drivers may need a "refresher course" on dealing with medical emergencies, Allan said.

"This shouldn't happen."

Coast Mountain Bus Company officials are investigating the reported incident, said spokesman Jerry Parminter.

© The Vancouver Province 2005