New Jersey state regulators have shut down Delran Township's Emergency Squad, saying the agency's chief lacks EMT certification and has tried to hinder their investigation.
The Cherry Hill Courier Post reports that the state's paramedic director, Scot Phelps, sent a letter announcing a summary suspension for the squad effective Monday.
“You may not, under any circumstances, operate as a BLS (basic life support) service provider,” Phelps wrote in the letter.
The letter, which also alleged that Chief Donald Horner threatened investigators, said such a suspension can be imposed when “the continued licensure of that provider poses an immediate or serious threat to the public health, safety or welfare.”
Personnel from other agencies in Burlington County have been staffing Delran's Chester Avenue station since the suspension took effect, Township Administrator Jeffrey Hatcher told the Courier Post.
The Delran Emergency Squad also covered neighboring Riverside, and Hatcher says officials are seeking agreements from several other squads to cover Delran and Riverside on a 30-day basis.
Phelps said in his letter that the Office of Emergency Medical Services was told on June 11 that Horner worked on an ambulance “without a current EMT certification.” An investigator determined that his EMT certificate had expired on Dec. 31, 2010, and his EMT-Instructor certificate lapsed at the end of 2016.
According to Phelps, investigators cut short an attempted audit on June 13 “due to threats of bodily injury” from Horner.
“In fact, you were belligerent, combative and uncooperative,” Phelps wrote in the letter, which alleged that the chief “deliberately hindered” the investigation.
The probe found that the Delran squad was in violation of a requirement that each BLS ambulance carry at least two certified EMTs and that Horner had removed his name “from the patient care reports and replaced it with currently certified personnel.”
The Courier Post could not reach Horner for comment Tuesday.
