Paramedic Recounts Shoemaker CPR

A veteran fire department paramedic gave Bill Shoemaker’s lawyers a running start in their $50-million malpractice suit Wednesday, testifying that the injured jockey-turned-trainer repeatedly groaned while receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in a hospital emergency room.

Pete Morales Jr., the second witness called by Shoemaker’s attorneys at the jury trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, surprised defense attorneys as well as Shoemaker’s legal team with his testimony because it wasn’t included in a lengthy deposition he had given four years ago.

“As they did the CPR, the patient was groaning,” said Morales, who works for the L.A. County Fire Department. “I got out of the room because I knew something was wrong. I knew this was going to court. It was something you don’t hear, because patients are usually unconscious.”

Morales, who has worked as a paramedic for 22 years, said he heard Shoemaker groan three or four times while receiving CPR. Shoemaker, who suffered a broken neck and other injuries when his Ford Bronco II tumbled down a 30-foot embankment in a single-car accident off Route 30 in San Dimas in 1991, is now a quadriplegic. He has sued Glendora Community Hospital and seven doctors who treated him the night of the accident, alleging that their negligence led to his current condition.

Morales accompanied Shoemaker in the ambulance that delivered him to the hospital. Asked by Neil Papiano, Shoemaker’s lead attorney, if CPR--which includes putting pressure on someone’s chest to revive the heart--is ever done on a conscious patient, Morales said:

“It’s not supposed to be.”

In blood-alcohol tests taken at the hospital, Shoemaker twice tested well over the state’s legal limit for driving. The state didn’t prosecute drunk-driving charges against the Hall of Fame jockey because no one else was involved in the accident.