Black woman says her daughter died after medics 'assumed' she couldn't afford an ambulance ride

A Tampa woman is claiming that her recently deceased daughter died needlessly because medics who arrived to treat her wouldn't give her an ambulance ride they assumed she couldn't afford.

Local news station WPBF reports that Tampa resident Nicole Black earlier this month found her daughter, 31-year-old Crystle Galloway, slumped over in a bathtub with drool coming out of her mouth. Despite not being responsive at the time, Crystle was still breathing.

She called 911 and told them of her daughter's condition, while also noting that Crystle had just been given a C-Section to deliver her newborn son just days earlier.

After medics arrived, she claims they immediately told her that she would have to take her daughter in her own car because she wouldn't be able to afford an ambulance ride.

"They never asked us if we had insurance, which we do," she explained. "The whole conversation as the EMS drivers put my child in my car was that was best for us because we couldn’t afford an ambulance."

After Black brought her daughter to a nearby hospital, she was found to have bleeding in her brain. She fell into a coma and subsequently died shortly after.

The medics who responded to Black's call dispute her account and denied they told her that she couldn't afford an ambulance. However, Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill has subsequently said that the medics failed to do their job properly, even if they never discouraged Black from putting her daughter in an ambulance.

"The medics were suspended after an investigation revealed they failed to check Galloway's vital signs and also filled out paperwork incorrectly," writes WPBF. "They checked the patient hadn't been found when clearly she had."