Ambulance With Heart Attack Victim Forced To Wait At U.S. Customs

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 afterwards 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 Friday in serious condition. "This was a life-saving procedure," said Lauzon on Friday, 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 Friday. Amlin said the ambulance, according to well-established protocol, received a police escort to the tunnel entrance with several intersections blocked off to help speed the trip. Tunnel traffic was shut down and, after the ambulance arrived at the border crossing, a tunnel company pickup truck with flashing lights, led it to a designated U.S. Customs lane where it was supposed to be waved through. "We have a system set up. We are to be pre-cleared and no problems," Amlin said. "We don't run down the street with lights and sirens for nothing. We will go to Homeland Security and ask them why. They have to have some reasonable grounds." ... http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6bd3ce64-fc1d-43a1-b7f3-14116363682a [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on November 19, 2007]

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