Fayette County emergency officials

are defending the way a youth baseball player was treated after he was

struck in the chest Friday night by a pitch and died later from an erratic

heartbeat.

An e-mail circulating the county

criticizes the paramedics who treated John Peter Ashmore for an allegedly

slow response time, for not shocking his heart and for almost dropping

him off the stretcher when he was rushed to the ambulance.

"It took EMS 15-20 minutes

to get on the site," the e-mail charges. "When they did get

on the site, they only worked on the boy for a couple of minutes on the

field and then put the boy on a gurney and took him to the ambulance.

En route to the ambulance, the paramedics almost threw him from the gurney

when going over a curb. Not only was the response time unacceptable, but

so was the facts that they did not buckle the child on the gurney nor

did they use the paddles to shock the heart into motion again," the

e-mail charges.

The first ambulance got there

within five minutes and 24 seconds of receiving the call from the county's

911 dispatch center, which is a good time, said Deputy Chief Allen McCullough

of the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. It took

just over one minute to dispatch the first call taken by the 911 center,

said director Cheryl Rogers.

And because Ashmore had stopped

breathing and was showing a weakening pulse, it was more important to

restart his breathing and administer drugs through an IV and perhaps administer

limited interventional procedures that paramedics are allowed to perform,

McCullough said.

While paramedics failed to

strap him to the stretcher, it wobbled a little but Ashmore was never

injured during the transport, McCullough said, adding that several people

were carrying the stretcher at the time, making it more stable than if

it were carried by just two people.

"John's medical condition

was appropriately managed by the trauma protocols that have been approved

of care in managing trauma," McCullough said. He noted that the survival

rate of victims who sustain cardiac arrest from blunt trauma is less than

1 percent.

It was unlikely Ashmore's heart

was in a "shockable rhythm" because of the manner in which he

was injured and based on the information from an off-duty Clayton County

paramedic who attended to Ashmore moments after he was struck, McCullough

said.

Ashmore died from a disturbance

to his heart rhythm that was brought on when the ball struck his left

chest, said Dr. Kris Sperry, the state's chief medical examiner. Ashmore's

heart was bruised during the incident, added Sperry, who conducted the

autopsy Saturday morning.

Ashmore did not have symptoms

indicating that his heart needed to be shocked when he was first attended

to by medical personnel, McCullough.

According to the circulating

e-mail message, "John was up to bat and was hit by a wild pitch in

the upper part of his chest. When the ball hit, he immediately grabbed

his chest, started crying and dropped to the ground. He stopped crying

and his body went limp. Several coaches and parents were on the scene

and immediately began doing CPR, but it did not seem to help."

Paramedics were able to get

Ashmore loaded into the ambulance and on the way to Fayette Community

Hospital within 12 minutes after arriving on the scene, which was an excellent

time, McCullough noted. When the paramedics first approached the victim,

they spoke with an off-duty Clayton County paramedic who was already on

the scene and said Ashmore's pulse appeared to be weakening.

Instead of dragging a lot of

medical equipment from the ambulance, the paramedics decided to rush Ashmore

to the ambulance where other paramedics were preparing to intervene with

medical procedures, McCullough said. That was to shave some time off getting

Ashmore to the hospital, McCullough added.

The goal was to take Ashmore

to Fayette Community Hospital to continue resuscitation efforts and then

fly him to a trauma center hospital, McCullough said.

"You're trying to do this

as quickly as you can," McCullough said.

Paramedics were able to resuscitate

Ashmore several times after he was clinically dead, McCullough noted.

"They were able to do

the things they needed to do to save him," McCullough said.

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