Christine Quinn tends to the fallen intern. (Photo: Holly Bailey/Yahoo News)
City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn was forced to call Police Commissioner Ray Kelly personally for help after an 18-year-old intern reportedly fainted in the heat at a press conference in Williamsburg.
According to reporters on the scene, Ms. Quinn was about half an hour into an event marking the seventh anniversary of the city's Fair Solid Waste Management Plan when one of City Councilwoman Diana Reyna's interns fainted and hit her head on the pavement.
Taking a page from "superhero" Newark Mayor Corey Booker's playbook, Ms. Quinn reportedly rushed to the intern's side as reporters and staffers called 911.
Pictures from the event show Ms. Quinn, in sandals, sitting on the sidewalk, tending to the woman, who "drifted in and out of consciousness, telling Quinn and others attending to her that she wasn’t sure where she was," according to Yahoo! News.
A member of Ms. Quinn's security detail--who is apparently also an EMT--also came to the rescue, reportedly offering the young girl ice and oxygen as they waited for help.
But the ambulance didn't come. Finally, an increasingly frustrated Ms. Quinn excused herself and reportedly placed a personal call to Mr. Kelly asking for help.
According to NY1's Grace Rauh, a Hatzolah ambulance finally arrived on the scene 33 minutes after the first 911 call. A city ambulance arrived at 12:26 p.m., as the Hatzolah ambulance was pulling away, Yahoo said.
Ms. Quinn reportedly called the wait "inexcusable."
"Over a half an hour for an ambulance to get to a place where a young girl had fainted, was lying on the street, where four TV cameras, at least, the speaker of the City Council and a councilmember raises a great question - how long it yet takes an ambulance to get anywhere else where there aren't television [cameras] and aren't two elected officials?" Ms. Quinn told reporters, according to the Daily News.
"I don’t know what in god’s name could have taken so long to get this ambulance to help this young girl but you can rest assured I am going to find out because it’s just not acceptable," she continued, according to Yahoo.
The event comes as the city's emergency response times are under intense scrutiny following a series of screw-ups, including a delay that has been blamed as potentially contributing to the death of a little girl.
Ms. Quinn's team has cancelled the rest of her events for the day, including a senior center visit and a 1:30 p.m. press conference in the Bronx.
