Earl Moore Jr

Earl Moore Jr. died an hour after he was transported to the hospital. Now the paramedics who transported him are being charged with his murder and rightfully so. Police body cam footage shows the paramedics yelling at Earl saying, “We’re not going to pick you up. Get up! I’m too tired for this tonight.” Then the other paramedic pulled and pushed him onto the gurney faced down and strapped him in. Earl died of asphyxiation from being strapped down face down on the gurney. Earl was only 35 years old.

People are saying it was race related. Earl was a 35 year old Black man, and both of the EMTs were White, one a woman and the other a man. Earl had been drinking. He was hallucinating. He called 911 knowing that he was in trouble from alcohol withdrawal. The police showed up, and called the EMTs.

After the EMTs showed up, even the police noticed that the behavior was unusual from the woman. He told her to listen to some music and try to calm down. That’s how egregious her behavior was.

This whole thing happened in Illinois. This was a private EMT company that the city hired. According to others in the profession, there was so much wrong with the whole situation. At no point is a patient supposed to get on the stretcher by themselves. They should have never pulled and pushed him down that way. You could hear how hard they pushed his body down on the gurney. Lastly, never is a patient supposed to be faced down on a gurney for the very reason that Earl died.

This brings about a bigger issue though. Do you know that statistically speaking, black people are more likely to die in the care of medical professionals than any other race of people? They do not believe us when we say something is wrong. They do not believe us when we say we are in pain. They always assume we are just making things up. It is a problem in this country that stems all the way back to slavery.

We are discriminated against even by the people employed to help us. I have the receipts because I have a very low pain tolerance and I am often told that there is no way it could still hurt. I’m sorry, you can feel my pain? When I got a root canal last year, they told me that it could not still hurt because the nerve was no longer there. Still felt it. When I was in the hospital giving birth, I told them that I still felt all of that, and they told me that I could not get any more medication and that I had enough. We constantly have to advocate for ourselves because nobody else is going to do it for us and we are taught this at a very young age. I had to teach it to my own children. Who can we trust to take care of us, but us? Nobody!

Not only is there now a criminal murder case in the making, but the family is also suing for wrongful death. These people will never be able to work in the medical field again. I feel like this is a start. I feel like the only reason we know that this happened to Earl is because the police body cam was on and recording the whole thing. I feel like there are probably others out there that have gotten the same treatment, but the camera just wasn’t rolling. These are the people we are supposed to trust to help us when we are in medical trouble, and they killed him. What are we supposed to do with that?