Lawsuit filed in man’s death

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001 | 9:39 a.m.

The wife of a Las Vegas man who choked on a piece of turkey on Thanksgiving Day two years ago and died three months later has sued the fire department.

Andria Larsen, through her attorney Robert Qualey, filed the suit on Nov. 21, claiming paramedics were dispatched too slowly. It was just four days before the statute of limitations was to expire.

Her husband, Donald Larsen, survived the initial incident but died on March 3, 2000. The lawsuit alleges Larsen died as a result of the choking.

Larsen's suit claims the Clark County Fire Department unit that responded to the couple's home and centralized city of Las Vegas Fire Department dispatchers took too long. The couple's home was in the 5000 block of Lindero Place, a few blocks from a fire station on Russell Road near McCarran International Airport .

"We will show it took the fire department six to seven minutes before they even dispatched a unit," Qualey said, claiming negligence contributed to the incident. "They failed to dispatch in a timely manner."

The Clark County Fire Department referred inquiries to Las Vegas Fire Department Deputy Chief of Communications Jeff Morgan, who said because the department had been served with the lawsuit he could not comment.

Morgan referred all questions to Assistant City Attorney Bill Henry, who declined to discuss the case.

The fire departments and city attorney's office declined to release the record of how much time it took to dispatch an emergency vehicle on Nov. 25, 1999, to the Larsen's home. They also declined to release the time they received the call and the arrival time of the unit.

The lawsuit said that as Larsen began choking on turkey, his wife called 911.

Fire officials "failed to follow procedures for said emergency situation and failed to properly and completely operate its emergency dispatch system, resulting in severe injury to, and the death of, Donald Larsen," the suit says.

The suit seeks damages for "mental distress and anguish, loss of consortium, economic loss (and) lost wages" to Andria Larsen.

In addition to both fire departments, the Clark County government, Metro Police, the city and county fire communications center and Tritech Software Systems, makers of the dispatch software, were named as defendants in the complaint.