Inquest On Fort Erie, Ontario Teen’s Death Reaching Its Conclusion.

By Doug Draper

 A five-person jury is expected to table its findings and recommendations at 3 p.m. this December 21 following more than three weeks of testimony into the circumstances surrounding the death two years ago of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.

The Welland Courthouse where the Inquest has been held. Photo by Doug Draper

 Reilly Anzovino was pronounced dead at 1:21 a.m. on December 27, 2009 following a traffic collision in the late hours of Boxing Day on Highway 3 between her hometown of Fort Erie and Port Colborne. Many residents in Niagara’s south end, including members of Reilly’s family, have wondered ever since if she would still be alive today if the Niagara Health System had not converted emergency rooms at hospitals it operates in Fort Erie and Port Colborne to urgent care centres that could no longer accept with life-threatening injuries or illnesses. With the closing of those ERs, Reilly was transported that night to an emergency room further away at the hospital in Welland.

 Lawyers in the case, including those for the Niagara Health System and the Niagara regional government’s EMS (ambulance) services, stressed in summations this December 20 that Reilly, the passenger in one of the cars involved in the collision, was so badly injured, according to evidence presented by a number of medical experts during the inquest, that she would not have survived if the accident occurred immediately outside the emergency room.

 Maureen Currie, the Anzovino family’s lawyer, argued that regional paramedics waited far too long at the scene of the accident – about 20 minutes – before rushing Reilly off to Welland. She also questions whether it may not have been better to transport her to a trauma centre at the Erie County Medical Centre in Buffalo, N.Y.

 Currie and the family refused to go along with one draft recommendation coming out of the inquest asking that a 10-minute limit on loading a patient on to an ambulance before rushing them to hospital  be reviewed. They fear that the 10-minute standard may be weakened rather than strengthened if it is reviewed.

 Niagara At Large will be at the court for the jury’s decisions on this case and will be reporting the details to our readers. We will also have more commentary  on the outcome of this important inquest and what it means for hospital services in Niagara in the days ahead.