This is terrifying. Husband says Macon police used too much force:
It was about 5 a.m.Bridgett Donahue, 45, awoke at her Cumberland Drive residence. She needed to use the restroom. While washing her hands, she glanced up at the mirror and discovered a reflection that horrified her.
“My face was barely recognizable. My cheeks, my jaws, were all swelled up. My lips were all cracked. My tongue was swelling by the second. I looked down and my arms and legs were swelling too. They got to be about the size of balloons. I started to have difficulty breathing,” she said during an interview at her home Thursday.
Donahue, in the initial stages of recovery from a surgical procedure Monday, was having a severe allergic reaction to pain medication prescribed by her doctor.
“I screamed so loud everybody in the house woke up,” she said.
At 5 a.m., a 911 dispatcher at the Macon-Bibb Communications 911 Center received Donahue’s call. Donahue stated her address, “2528 Cumberland Drive.” She said her body was swelling up. She requested an ambulance.
The 911 dispatcher reported the call to the regional ambulance dispatch office at The Medical Center of Central Georgia – routine procedure for a medical emergency – and that dispatcher called for an ambulance to Donahue’s home.
Minutes later, Donahue’s mother, Cora Jordan of Albany, who was in Macon to help care for Donahue, called 911 again. She asked for an ambulance. Again, she reported Donahue’s swelling. And again, the 911 dispatcher transferred the call to an operator at the Medical Center.
A third 911 call was made minutes later.
Donahue’s daughter, Brande Jordan, 20, made one of those calls, unsatisfied that nearly 10 minutes later an ambulance had not arrived.
“All I know is my mother is screaming, crying and saying that she feels like she’s dying. The fact that no one had come to help didn’t make any sense to us,” she said.
It was during one of these calls that a dispatch operator at the Medical Center reported hearing yelling, possibly an argument, in the background at the Donahue home.
That dispatcher assumed that a domestic violence situation was occurring at the home and summoned police officers to the scene.
That dispatcher assumed that a domestic violence situation was occurring at the home and summoned police officers to the scene. You can imagine how that plays out.