EMT Richard Senneff transcription testimony
05/01/2011 14:30
Richard Senneff has been a firefighter for the city for 25 years and a paramedic for 26 years from 1982.
DDA Walgren asks whether the teletype he received about the location, the age, the gender of the person and also the incident time of 12.21 if it reflected the dispatch time.
Senneff replies “12.22pm”
“How long did it take you?” asked DDA Walgren.
“We got on the scene at 12.26pm, so four minutes”
DDA Walgren asks if he can show with the laser pointer where the rescue ambulance was parked.
“Were you immediately escorted into the house?”
Senneff said that they were escorted into the house by security people wearing dark suits, dark ties and white shirts. Senneff told the court that he was the first paramedic to enter the home.
“What did you see when you first came into the room?” (the bedroom) asked DDA Walgren
“I saw the doctor” replied Senneff identifying Dr Murray for the court.
“Looking at the picture, use the laser pointer please show where Dr Murray was” asked DDA Walgren
“He was standing right by the night stand of the bed reaching over the patient” replied Senneff.
DDA Walgren then asked Senneff to describe what he saw.
“I saw what appeared to be a pale, thin patient wearing pyjamas with a night cap on, on the bed”
“Did you see anything happening?”
“I saw the doctor attempting to move the patient to the floor”
“Did you see anyone assisting him?”
“I did not see anyone assisting him” replied Senneff.
“Do you remember there being a security personnel in there?”
“There could have been” replied Senneff.
“Did you have a particular role to play as part of this emergency response team?” asked DDA Walgren
“All of our jobs are predetermined” replied Senneff.
Senneff went on to tell the court that he was the radio man and that he had control in the information gathering.
“Did the doctor refer to himself as the patient’s personal cardiologist?”
“Yes he did”.
“Other than what you first described, did you observe any type of hospital machine hooked up like a heart monitor?”
“No I did not”
“Did you see an IV or an IV stand or an IV kit?” asks DDA Walgren
“It was on the other side of the bed between the doctor and me”.
“At some point coming into the room, are you trying to obtain information from Dr Murray and being the radio man and the person in charge was that your primary responsibility to get information from Dr Murray?
“Yes it was”
“What did Dr Murray tell you?” asked DDA Walgren
“He didn’t answer. I repeated the question again, what is the underlying medical condition and he said “There isn’t any”. I did pursue it and asked again. It is unusual to come into a home and have an IV pole there and my first thought was that this was a hospice patient” replied Senneff.
“You repeated the question to Dr Murray?”
“Yes I did and he said “No he’s alright, I’m just treating him for dehydration” That seemed too simple. The patient appeared under weight, I mean it’s midday, he’s got a doctor and there’s items around the house it looked like there was someone under the care of the physicians” replied Senneff.
“You asked Dr Murray if the patient was taking any medications?”
“He said no, none. He’s not taking anything. I asked him that again as that didn’t add up. He then said “I gave him lorazepam”
“Did he tell you about any other medicine, narcotic agents that he gave the patient at all?” asked DDA Walgren.
“He said that’s it, just the lorazepam” replied Senneff.
“Did the doctor tell you at any time he had given the propofol?”
Senneff replied that no other medication was mentioned except for the lorazepam.
“Did you ask how long the patient had been in this condition, how long he had been down?”
“He said “it just happened”. I said it just happened? and he repeated saying “it just happened right when I called you”
“When he said that, when I just called you what does that mean?” asked DDA Walgren.
“We go on a lot of calls and a cancer patient been down for 15 minutes and not going so when we get a call like that we get excited because we’re going to get to do something, bring the patient back” replied Senneff.
“Did you observe the patient?” asked DDA Walgren
“I helped them move the patient” replied Senneff.
“So at some point was he moved?”
Senneff then describes how Michael Jackson was moved. One firefighter went to the head of the bed and got the patients arms under the arm pits and moved him to the foot of the bed. He described how the patient was on the floor with his feet towards them and his head towards the fireplace.
“How did he appear to you? Did it appear that he just went down?” asked DDA Walgren.
“As soon as I picked him up, the legs were cool to the touch. When we hooked him to the EKG we had a flat line with very little pulses of electrical activity”
“The taps are placed on the chest of the patient?”
“That’s correct” replied Senneff.
Senneff was then asked what the EKG reading showed and he said he would say it was flat with an occasional small electric pulse activity which he explained was caused from the backup systems in the heart trying to start the entire electrical processing of the heart and that it was a small blip.
Senneff was asked again the reading of the EKG and he again said that it was asystole.
“Did you make any observations as to the color of the hands and feet of the patient?” DDA Walgren asked.
“The hands and feet were tinged blue, that means that there hadn’t been respiration going on and the red blood cells were turning blue. There’s no circulation going on” replied Senneff.
“Based on the observations of the eyes being dry, how about their size?”
“The pupils were dilated. It means that the system had collapsed” replied Senneff.
“In lay person terms, from the time you were at the scene throughout your care and transfer to UCLA,was it in your mind that the patient was deceased?”
“Yes” replied Senneff.
“And that was based on a number of factors that you had described already?”
“Yes”
DDA Walgren then asks what the rest of the team were doing in the room at the time.
“Martin Blount is securing an airway. Bret Harren is starting chest compressions, Mark Goodwin is attempting to get an IV and I’m hooking up electrodes to give us a EKG reading and I’m changing the IV to a system that we can use” replied Senneff.
“Did any of this portion of care start at the side?”
“It all occurred at the foot of the bed.We were all very busy”
“What does it mean for the eyes to be blown?”
“It means the eyes were fully dilated”
Senneff went on to say that he subsequently learned this patient was Michael Jackson. He said that based on his 27 years of experience and the observations he made with the patient being asystole, the flatline,the tinged color of the feet, fixed and dilated eyes and the patient being cool to the touch his gut reaction was that this did not just happen and that it had been a period of time.
“Can you give a window of time?” asked Walgren
“That’s hard to say, more than 20 minutes” replied Senneff.
Senneff was asked about the IV stand and he said that when they arrived it was hooked up to the patient’s left leg on the inside of his calf and that it did appear to be a standard IV saline IV bag.
Senneff was then asked apart from the treatments already mentioned, were drugs used on the patient to revive him?
He said that two drugs were used to kick start the heart and while they were being given chest compressions continued. He said “in simple terms basically a tube was inserted into that trachea and sealed and air pumped directly into the lungs”.
Senneff was then asked about capnography and he explained that it was a means to read the carbon dioxide levels in the body and that the placement of the ET tube is what gives them the readings.
He was then asked how successful was placing the ET tube and he replied saying it was very quick and that he was surprised how quickly it went in as they were not doing it in a hospital operating room under ideal conditions but it was in and they were getting readings on the capnography.
After a brief questioning on the readings that were given the Judge calls afternoon break.
Back in the courtroom.
Richard Senneff takes to the stand to continue being questioned.
“You had mentioned initially that there was an IV in the patient’s leg. When you gave the patient that IV was it via the IV that was already in place or was there some restructuring that needed to be in place?” asked DDA Walgren.
Senneff explained that there are two systems, one with needles and one without. The hospital changed over to a needless system years ago. On the IV catheter tube there was a port. The needle port has a little rubber stopper and a valve and he explained that you screw the syringe on it.
With a needle system you slide the needle in and slide it right back out.
He said that when he first arrived it was a needle system kit and that there was a IV bag with a tube attached to Michael Jackson’s leg and off that tube there was a port to allow administration of drugs into the IV tubing. He confirmed that the LAFD had gone to a needless system. He went on to say that after the two rounds of meds given through the tube the EKG readings never changed.
“At some point of these two rounds, was the leg IV compromised in some way?” asked DDA Walgren.
“We had our medical kit and opened a starter kit we had some medications there and Dr Murray took some of the medicines and went to use the IV port. While he was using it he pulled the IV out” Said Senneff.
“What happened then” asked DDA Walgren.
“I started another IV” replied Senneff.
“Was one of the other paramedics assisting you in starting a new IV?”
“Mark Goodwin started looking at the patient’s arms and hands to get an IV in” replied Senneff.
“Did you see Goodwin trying to get an IV in?” asked DDA Walgren.
“He was doing the usual trying to get a needle in” replied Senneff.
Senneff explained to the court that Goodwin was trying to get a needle into Michael Jackson and that he tried both his right and left arm in multiple locations.
“Was he able to get a good IV location on either arm?” asked DDA Walgren
“No sir” replied Senneff.
“At some point did you try to get an IV in the jugular of the patient?”
“The least external jugular”
“Did you do that personally?” asked DDA Walgren.
“I did” replied Senneff.
“And were you able to get the IV set up in the jugular?”
“Yes I did”
Senneff was then asked if there were additional rounds of the heart starting medications and whether it would have a different effect than being in the arm or leg. He replied that it would because it’s a larger vein and a more direct route to the heart.
Senneff said that he still did not get any response and that himself and his team never found a pulse on Michael Jackson, but Dr Murray said to him that he felt a femoral pulse but he couldn’t feel anything.
“At some time are you making contact with the bay station at UCLA? What is the bay station and what is the procedure in that regard?”
“Paramedics are not doctors and we don’t have all the discretion of what a doctor can do. Specifically there’s protocall in place and specially trained nurses that man the radios who give out standard orders ,so we call them and we get orders from a doctor behind the scenes and we carry out the orders. We give them information and if we do something involving medication we tell them” replied Senneff.
“At 12.57 were you notified by UCLA that all attempts were futile?” asked DDA Walgren.
“I don’t know the exact time” replied Senneff. He notes where it would be on the base station recording.
Senneff then explained what happened when UCLA wanted to call it.
“I told them we had a very high profile VIP and we’d be much more comfortable transporting that patient to the hospital”
“Did you tell UCLA that his personal physician was on the scene?”
“UCLA had a question, we had done three rounds and nothing happened so the physician at UCLA wanted to call it but the physician on the scene was not willing to call it so I conveyed that and UCLA asked if the doctor on the scene would assume care. He said yes so that was the transport” (meaning Dr Murray would assume care of the patient in the ambulance).
“Were additional rounds of heart starting drugs given?”
“Yes in the ambulance” replied Senneff.
Senneff told the court that after that they prepared to transport the patient and he told Dr Murray that he had to accompany the patient in the ambulance if he was going to assume care.
He told the court that they slid the patient from the floor onto a flat and secured him and moved as much equipment as they could to the gurney and secured to the gurney.
“Once the patient was placed in the ambulance, did you have reason to run back upstairs?” asked DDA Walgren.
“Yes I turned around and went back upstairs because I didn’t want to leave any equipment behind” replied Senneff.
“When you went back upstairs, did you see Dr Murray in the room?”
“He was standing on the other side of the bed by the nightstand and a bag, with a plastic trash bag picking things up” replied Senneff.
“Could you see what he was picking up?”
“No sir I wasn’t looking hard enough”
“Where were you in the ambulance?”
“I was at the head end of the gurney with the patients head between my knees to keep an eye on his airway.That allows me to be right near the microphone. I was in the RA facing the windows, facing backwards, my back was to the driver. The other two paramedics were with us”
“How about Dr Murray?”
“Yes and Dr Murray” replied Senneff.
He was then asked if they were being followed by other vehicles and he said “it was unbelievable to say the least”.
He said “There was people running down the street taking pictures, there were security people following us. There were lots of other cars passing us on the left and on the right”.
“What did you do when you first arrived at UCLA?”
“We backed up to the door. There was a whole lot of people as the hospital security was not deployed yet.
Dr Murray asked if we could put a towel over Michael Jackson’s face. We said sure. We gave the doctors notification of the treatment we gave Michael Jackson then one of the doctors spoke directly to Dr Murray”.
“Did you ever describe Dr Murray’s demeanor as spinning?” asked DDA Walgren.
“He was moving around very busy, he was sweating, multi tasking at a high rate of speed”
“Did Dr Murray ever advise anyone in your team that he had administered propofol to Michael Jackson?”
“No sir” replied Senneff.
Cross examination by Defense Attorney Love.
Love begins by asking Senneff about his role and training and then moves on to the 25th June 2009.
“When you got out at Carolwood Drive, who did you see first?”
“Security personnel” replied Senneff
“Did this person give you a name?” asked Low
“It’s not that I can’t recall,it’s just that they didn’t give me a name”
He was then asked by Low what he saw when entering the room.
“What I saw was the doctor taking the patients shoulders and preparing to get him to the floor”.
“When you entered that room, were you aware of anyone who had performed CPR?”
“No I was not” replied Senneff.
He then goes over what he saw when he first entered the bedroom and he was asked to describe the patient and what he noticed. He said he noticed a shower cap type thing on his head, pyjamas that were opened and that he thought the patient appeared to be very underweight.
He was asked by Low what he meant by underweight.
“Well, when people say they need to drop a few pounds, he appeared to need to add a few pounds”
“Did you form any opinions or impressions at that time?” asked Low.
“My first impression was that this was a hospice patient”
“I think you first characterized him as lying on the bed and very,very,very thin like a hospice patient, cancer patient” continued Low.
“This person was very pale. I could see ribs”
“It’s not unusual for someone who’s been a drug addict is it?” asked Low
“No sir” replied Senneff.
“While you were standing there in that moment, were you able to recognize that face? Had you ever seen it before?”
Objection! Facts not in evidence.
Re ask
“Did that person in that moment look anything like Michael Jackson?”
Objection! Sustained
Senneff was then asked if he had asked any of the staff/security if the patient had been taking drugs or not.
He replied No sir. He was then asked if he had asked Dr Murray the same question.
“It would be a standard question but I don’t remember if I asked about recreational drugs or not” replied Senneff.
Defense Attorney Low put forth to the court that the paramedics didn’t want to save Michael Jackson because he was a drug addict and whether that was the reason why they wanted to call it at the scene.
Low also stated to the court that possibly the paramedics didn’t want to take Michael to the hospital because hospitals are understaffed and treatment would be too expensive.
Richard Senneff told the court he didn’t know how to answer that question as he had never heard such a ridiculous thing.
Witness is excused. Court to resume 9.15am tomorrow morning.