EAST STROUDSBURG PA. Nov. 28, 2007 — A routine trip to Wal-Mart turned into tragedy for a family that blames a store security guard for not calling 911 immediately when a customer was stricken in the parking lot.
Eric Eiler saw his father leave their Middle Smithfield Township home to go shopping on Sept. 1, 2006. Before noon, Irwin Eiler, 66, was dead in the Pocono Medical Center emergency room.
The elder Eiler, a grandfather and retired postal worker from New York City, died from what doctors told his family was congestive heart failure.
The loss still pains Eiler's children. The family says the first person to see Eiler in distress did not do enough to help.
Security guard Walter Strazle saw Eiler stop his car in the parking lot and noticed he was having trouble breathing. According to Strazle, Eiler did not tell him to call 911, but instead had him call his son.
Strazle called the Eiler residence and got Ron Eiler, 41.
Ron, who has a learning disability, called his brother, Eric, instead of calling 911. Eric, 38, was on his way to a job interview.
Eric called Wal-Mart. Store personnel alerted Strazle, who left Irwin Eiler in the parking lot and went inside to talk to Eric on the phone.
Eric Eiler paraphrased and summarized the conversation:
Strazle, "Your father is having shortness of breath. I saw he had parked in a no-parking zone and went over to tell him to move his vehicle. That's when I saw he was having a problem. He told me to call you."
Eiler, "Have you called 911?"
Strazle, "No."
Eiler then drove to Wal-Mart. He tried calling 911 himself from his cell phone, but was unable to get a signal.
When arriving at Wal-Mart by 10:45 a.m., he saw Strazle standing by as a woman tried helping his father, who was still sitting in his vehicle. The woman, a medical assistant, found Irwin Eiler's pulse and was trying to get him to lay back in the seat. Paramedics arrived several minutes later.
The medical assistant's husband, Richard Benavides of Pocono Township, said he and his wife happened upon the scene on their way into the store and stopped to help.
"We saw (Strazle) talking on a radio," Benavides said. "We asked him if he had called 911. He said, 'No, I have to report this to the store first,' so I called 911 as my wife began trying to help (Eiler)."
According to phone records Eric Eiler obtained from the county 911 dispatch center, Benavides called 911 at 10:41 a.m. and Strazle called at 10:42 a.m. Eric Eiler estimated that was 12 minutes after Strazle told him on the phone that he had not called 911.
"Why did he wait so long to call?" Eiler asked. "And his tone when I talked to him on the phone was cold, indifferent, like he didn't want to be bothered."
Eiler said that his father still wasn't breathing and that his skin was blue as he was rushed to the hospital. Irwin Eiler died after 11 a.m.
Strazle said simply, "I did what I was asked to do" in giving his version of events.
Strazle said he never told Eiler to move his vehicle when he saw Eiler was having trouble.
"I asked him if he was OK and he said, 'Yeah, I'll be fine,'" Strazle said. "He gave me his son's name and number and asked me to call him. I called and got (Ron Eiler) and told him who I was and what was going on.
"A little after that, the store called me inside and I talked to (Eric Eiler) and told him what was going on," Strazle said. "Then, I went back outside and saw the father couldn't breathe. I called 911. (The Benavides family) came by afterward and then the ambulance came."
Since their father died, the Eilers have been in contact via mail with Wal-Mart and U.S. Security Associates Inc., of Bath, Strazle's employer. Both have denied liability.
The Eilers are unable to afford a lawyer. Stroudsburg attorney Aaron DeAngelo briefly represented the Eiler family in a limited capacity pro bono.
DeAngelo told the Eilers that proving Wal-Mart or Strazle was at fault is extremely difficult. That's because Strazle did call 911, albeit not in as timely a manner as he probably should have.
The family has printed records of the 911 phone calls, but DeAngelo recently told them he is not in a position to obtain audio records and that he will no longer represent the family.
"So, now we're stuck," Eric Eiler said. "At this point, we just want our message to get out so that hopefully someone will take notice and help get us the closure we're looking for. I don't want to have to take this to court, but I don't want to rest until we get some sort of amicable solution.
"We just want Wal-Mart and (Strazle) to acknowledge their responsibility in what happened to our father," he said.
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