- By: Terry Camp
- Sep 6, 2022 Updated Sep 6, 2022
SAGINAW COUNTY (WJRT) – A lawsuit claims a woman who was left on a porch with gunshot wounds for more than an hour would have lived if someone would have come to help her.
The family of N’ala Wallace is suing Saginaw County 9-1-1, claiming emergency responders didn’t go to the shooting scene because they weren’t notified that the woman had been shot.
Wallace was shot, ran to a home for help, but died from injuries.
This happened in July of last year and as we have reported before, police had a number of shooting calls that day.
This was the early morning hours of July 5th, fireworks were still going off in Saginaw, gunshots as well.
Three other women were injured that night in shootings around the same time, but this lawsuit claims N’ala Wallace would have received faster medical attention if the 9-1-1 call would have been coded properly.
“She meant a lot to people,” says DeeAngela Wallace, the mother of N’ala.
23-year-old Nala Wallace was at a home on Burnham in Saginaw in the early morning hours of July 5th, 2021, where she was shot by a man.
She ran across the street, knocked on a door asking for help. The people at that home called 9-1-1, but the lawsuit claims help didn’t arrive for an hour and twenty-five minutes.
The woman who made that initial 9-1-1 call, called back
“I just called in an hour ago and said there were shots fired outside my house and there was a girl pounding on my door and no cops have showed up, and I just looked out my door finally, and she is laying on my porch, where the $*#& are these cops,” the woman could be heard in the July 5th, 2021 call.
“It wasn’t addressed as it should have been, I think it was taken a little lightly, it wasn’t taken as serious as it should have been,’ says DeeAngela Wallace.
She has filed this gross negligence lawsuit in state court against Saginaw County 9-1-1 and a supervisor, claiming N’ala Wallace might have lived if she would have received medical attention much earlier.
“We have experts who are going to testify to that, she laid on that porch for over an hour,” says attorney Victor Mastromarco.
Wallace was shot five times.
Mastromarco and attorney Kevin Kelly claim the initial 9-1-1 call was coded as a shots fired call, not as a ‘person may have been shot’ call.
“When you code it as shots fired, that means by their own policies, no one is going to come help, maybe the police will when they have time to get to it, when its a shooting, MMR is sent, police are sent, fire is sent if necessary and sure stuff was going on, that’s no excuse,” says Kelly.
The lawsuit is requesting a judgement of more than $25,000.
We attempted to reach Saginaw County 9-1-1’s director and the entity’s attorney for comment but I did not hear back.
Ramiro Garcia has been charged with murder in connection with Wallace’s death and is awaiting trial.
