Firehouse.com

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Sep. 30--ST. PETERSBURG -- The city's fire department has instituted a rule designed to prevent firefighters from accidentally running over anybody that might be lying down on the other side of a station's bay door before firefighters are dispatched to a call.

On Sept. 24, two firefighters with St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue -- emergency medical technician Jason Springer and paramedic David Bucholz -- hopped into a truck inside their station, opened the bay and proceeded to run over a homeless man lying outside.

The pair had been dispatched to go to the aid of the man, Ted Allen Lenox, 41, but all they knew was that he was in the immediate area, firefighters said.

After reviewing the incident, fire administrators said Springer and Bucholz had not violated any policies.

But late Tuesday, Assistant Chief James O. Wimberly distributed a new policy that requires a crewmember to activate the wall-mounted door opener from outside a truck and then check for a clear and unobstructed pathway.

The incident still remains under investigation.

At least one of the people who called authorities specified where Lenox was lying, according to a series of 911 calls released Friday by the St. Petersburg Police Department.

"I was telling the lady with 911," a male caller told a police dispatcher. "I was just getting on the interstate by [Tropicana Field] there. There's a guy laying in front of the fire department driveway bay door, and it looks like he was bleeding from the nose or mouth or something."

It was unclear what information was given to the firefighters before they left their station. Pinellas County's central dispatch system would not release 911 calls that administrators felt touched on Lenox's medical condition, which is private under federal law.

But the police department released calls passed on to its dispatchers, who routinely dispatch officers to reports of people in the street who appear injured. In one of those calls, a woman who saw the man at a different location expressed fear that he might get struck by a car.

Lenox had lain directly outside of a bay door at a fire station on Fourth Avenue South before he was hit, police said.