11ALIVE.COM, ATLANTA — The family of a College Park teen who died after collapsing during volleyball practice earlier this month announced legal representation on Thursday.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump joined the family for the announcement.
Amanda Sylvester, 15, was at a club volleyball practice on Dec. 5 when she collapsed on the floor of the Tracey Wyatt Recreation Center in College Park.
The incident was first reported as an allergic reaction. 911 was called immediately, but the family was forced to wait more than 40 minutes for an ambulance. When that didn’t happen, Amanda’s mom, Barbara Sylvester, drove through rush-hour traffic to Downtown Atlanta to a children’s hospital adjacent to Grady.
While an EMT crew from the City of College Park was quickly on the scene at the rec center where Amanda was practicing, the city cited state licensing rules for not allowing them to transport her.
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But, Grady Hospital, in a statement to 11Alive, said, under state law, the College Park first responders could have transported the teen.
Surveillance video shows a College Park Fire Rescue ambulance sitting in the parking lot for about 40 minutes.
Audio from a 911 call shows that, at the time, Grady Hospital had no ambulances available.
Amanda’s mother had to drive through an estimated 40 minutes of traffic.
“When she got to the hospital… she was still living. That tells us that if the emergency rescue services could have gotten to her 15-year-old daughter, she’d still be with us today,” Crump said on Thursday.
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Crump and his team went on to describe how Amanda had been a Type 1 diabetic since the age of five, but her blood sugar levels were fine at the time. They added that she also had no known allergies …