If video player is not showing, click here to watch.
A 22-year-old South Carolina man was arrested after police say he attempted to move a Summerville fire truck blocking his car.
CountOn2.com reports the crew was at the location for a medical call and told Antoine Hamilton they could not move the rig at the moment. According to police, Hamilton then tried to move the truck himself.
Fire officials told Live5News.com Hamilton couldn't move the truck because the air brakes weren't released.
Summerville Police Captain Jon Rogers told Counton2.com, "Obviously they don't want to make people late for their jobs, and they are going to be blocking vehicles when you have a firetruck, E.M.S and even police sometimes. However, when they are coming up on a scene and they are trying to render aid to someone, they're not really worried about where they're parking. Of course, you're just gonna have to wait for us to make sure that people are getting saved."
CountOn2.com's full story is here, and Live5News.com's is here.
Dumb Ignorant, Bastard! When he needs medical attention, I hope the first responders wait an look for a proper parking spot! Before assiting him!
Were they so short handed they had to take the driver inside with them?If so, thats a shame. Never leave a rig parked unattended with the engine running…or you risk ending up on Statter 911. If the driver was just being a hotdog and wanted to get inside where the action was, then someone needs to smack him upside the head with a wheelchock.
Turn off the motor at the scene of an incident? I'm not sure where you work, but leaving the motor running during EMS and fire operations is SOP with most departments. That's how you run the lights, etc. Besides, turning the motor off doesn't work too well when most fire trucks don't need keys to be started….
Being a Firefighter i think there are enough people on an engine that could have done both the things, render aid and moved the truck. We are there to serve public and should be considerent to other people.
the guy is a jerk and needs to have the book thrown at him
I saw where one person said about leaving the driver with the rig, and another person said about turning the engine off. As a fire fighter and emt, we sometimes might have enough personnel to leave someone with the rig, but it still would not have been moved as we may need to come back to the unit for additional equipment. Also, many emergencies require all hands on deck so to speak, and we cannot leave someone with the unit. As far as turning the unit off, won’t be able to really do that either as we have equipment on board that needs the powers source for charging uses and other needs where the engine needs to stay running for optimal power. So all fire, ems, police personnel on emergencies would prefer respect and patience with us in order to be able to handle all emergencies safely, and to the best of our abilities as quickly as we can. Especially since under many cases we are first in the line of danger. Thanks, just saw other comments on this story and wanted to put some info in from our stand point.
My engine runs with a minimum of two personnel. Three is a good day. Four is unheard of. Unfortunately, that means that we have to leave the engine unattended during medical emergencies. We don't intentionally block people in, but our first priority is incident stabilization. After that, we'll worry about the neighbors.