City Responds to Death of Local Woman

After nearly four days of speculation surrounding the death of a Johns Creek woman, city officials have released a statement.

At a press conference conducted Wednesday by Johns Creek City Manager John Kachmar and Chief of Police Ed Densmore, a prepared statement read by Kachmar stated Darlene Dukes, 39, died in her Johns Creek home at 602 Wales Drive in the St. Andrews apartment complex off Jones Bridge Road.

The death occurred Sat., Aug. 2. Dukes suffered a pulmonary embolism, not diabetic shock as originally confirmed by medical investigators.

According to the statement, Dukes called 911, stating she was having difficulty breathing.

According to the police reports, Dukes called 911 at 1:01 p.m. The police report also states that the address given was listed as an Atlanta address when the dispatcher entered the information into her Computer Aided Dispatch system.

Atlanta emergency personnel contacted the dispatcher within one minute to inform her that Dukes’ home was in Johns Creek – not Atlanta.

The police report revealed that Johns Creek police and the Fulton County Fire Department arrived at Dukes’ home at 1:29 p.m. and, after gaining entry to the apartment, found the woman unconscious in her bedroom. Emergency personnel began resuscitation efforts.

However, Rural Metro EMS did not arrive until 2:01 p.m.

Dukes was taken by ambulance to Emory Johns Creek hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 3:05 p.m.

“Our police department responded swiftly and our police officers and Fulton County firefighters made heroic efforts to save her life, but those efforts simply were not successful,” said Kachmar.

Initial reports from Fulton County showed the 911 operator stayed on the phone with Dukes for 25 minutes before realizing she had made a mistake. It was at that point that Johns Creek police were dispatched.

“Things simply did not work the way they were supposed to work,” said Kachmar. “Our people got there within three minutes. They were there trying to do their job.”

However, police and fire personnel were in Dukes home for 21 minutes before an ambulance was dispatched, and it was another 13 minutes before the ambulance arrived.
Johns Creek Chief of Police Ed Densmore said that the responding officers and fire personnel attempted to resuscitate Dukes.

“We are looking at what happened and putting in steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Densmore.

“We are not here to point fingers, we are here to talk about what we did,” said Kachmar.
Kachmar said that the city is working to build its own dispatch center, but that would be several years in the future.

The Matter of Sovereign Immunity
But who is to blame?

Since Saturday, Fulton County has fired the 911 operator who worked the emergency call, and is reportedly investigating the incident.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office has said a misrouted cell phone call might also have been cause for the emergency delay.

J. Tom Morgan, a trial lawyer in private practice in Decatur who served for 12 years as the District Attorney in DeKalb County, is familiar with governmental lawsuits.

Morgan, a nationally recognized expert on the prosecution of crimes who has appeared on CNN, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Court TV, was the lead prosecutor in the case against DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey, convicted of murdering his opponent Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown.

Morgan said liability for either the City of Johns Creek or Fulton County is limited by sovereign immunity – the age-old constitutional legal protection for governments and their employees.

“Even in a contractual situation, where Johns Creek has contracted with Fulton County, it is still a service of the government,” said Morgan. “This is why you can’t sue police officers, unless someone was intentionally maliced.”

The Brown family sued DeKalb County over the murder, but was not successful against its claim because of sovereign immunity.

Steve Leibel, a 2008 Atlanta Super Lawyer who sits on the Board of Governors for the State Bar Association, was the attorney who represented Derwin Brown’s widow in the DeKalb County sovereign immunity case.

He said there are many technical obstacles in finding liability in a governmentally related negligence suit.

“The courts are generally not interested in opening up a Pandora’s Box of liability for governmental inaction,” Leibel said. “The reason is they do not want open up the taxpayer’s purse for the lawsuit.”

Morgan and Leibel agreed that finding fault with private entities that contract with governments can be difficult, too.

Still, that might not prevent a lawsuit against the city or county.

“If somebody has $19, and if somebody has a pen and paper, someone will sue someone else,” said Morgan.

Morgan cautioned that even if you can prove liability, you still might not attain a settlement.

Johns Creek Not Alone in Emergency Services Crisis

There still remains the issue of moral liability – the system failed Darlene Dukes.

It’s no secret that municipalities have struggled against counties in an effort to gain local control. That is the very reason Johns Creek exists. Part and parcel of that local control is the ability to provide adequate public safety.

Johns Creek is not alone in that battle. Just ask John King, Doraville’s chief of police.
King, an Iraq War Veteran , said his city has faced similar problems with emergency 911 services, particularly with cellular phone call routing during emergencies.

He explained that Doraville believes it can respond more quickly than DeKalb County to any emergency. King said that with language barriers, misdirected and unanswered emergency calls, dropped calls are far more common than he would like.

During peak call times, DeKalb County places callers on hold using an automated system, said King.

Doraville’s top cop says the city’s hard-line phones are all routed to the appropriate 911 call center, but that is not the case for cell phone calls.

King says taxpayers pay the city directly for 911 call service and he believes the city is best poised to provide that service.

“Police will always beat everyone else to the scene because unlike fire, they are always on the street,” King said.

He said an ongoing issue is for the appropriate emergency training of police officers, so Doraville is hiring former fire fighters, already trained in emergency services, to work with the city.

King said that along with Doraville and Johns Creek, he can foresee similar problems with the newly incorporated city of Dunwoody.

“Residents don’t deserve to have all this red tape. Whether it is a police officer or an EMT, they want someone on their location on the scene as quickly as possible. They don’t care who it is,” King said.

“We need to engage our political leadership to solve this problem,” he said.
For King, a newly-elected DeKalb County CEO might give his city the chance to make a change.

For Johns Creek and Fulton, only time will tell. The relationship forecast doesn’t look as bright.

Pieper Meredith contributed to this story.