U.S. Customs delays Heart Attack Victim at Canada Border

WINDSOR, Ont. — An ambulance rushing a heart attack victim to Detroit from a Windsor hospital ill-equipped to perform life-saving surgery was stopped for secondary inspection Monday by U.S. Customs, despite the fact it carried a man fighting for his life.

Rick Laporte, 49 — who twice had been brought back to life with defibrillators — was being rushed across the border when a U.S. border guard ignored protocol at the Detroit portion of the tunnel and forced the ambulance — with siren and lights flashing — to pull over.

“If I’m that person in the booth, and there is an ambulance coming with a critically injured person, I’m not stopping the damn thing,” said Kat Lauzon, Laporte’s girlfriend. “I’m irate. I can’t figure it out. He could have died, and I would have blamed that person for murder.”

U.S. Customs officers at the secondary inspection site told the ambulance driver to go inside the office to produce identification, said a frustrated Larry Amlin, of Windsor Essex EMS.

Other guards told the paramedic crew to open the back doors of the ambulance, then asked Laporte to verbally confirm his identify, said Lauzon. She learned afterward of the incident from Laporte, who survived his life-saving emergency angioplasty surgery at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital.

Laporte, a Canadian Auto Workers Union executive, remained in the cardiac care unit yesterday in serious condition.

“This was a life-saving procedure,” Lauzon said yesterday, still furious. “What if it was one of their mothers in the ambulance? Would they pull it in? No damn way.”

“This was not normal circumstances,” she added. “How many drug dealers do you know that get a police escort in the back of an ambulance to go across the border? What is their damn reason for pulling it in?”

Chief Ron Smith of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Detroit could not be reached yesterday.

Source: Times Colonist