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Lawsuit: EMT gave patient lethal dose of incorrect medication • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
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Date: 2025-05-20
The family of a Sioux City man who died after an EMT allegedly injected him with the wrong drug is suing the city and its emergency medical providers.
The family of the late James Joseph Foster Jr. is suing the City of Sioux City, Sioux City Fire and Rescue, the Sioux City Police Department and 10 of their employees in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
The lawsuit claims that in the early hours of Aug. 18, 2023, a Sioux City police officer responded to a call about Foster, who was sitting or lying along the curb of a deserted residential street. Foster told the responding officer he had injured his arm, and eventually eight people from the police department and Sioux City Fire and Rescue responded.
According to the lawsuit, the 26-year-old Foster “never posed any threat” to the responders and was instead acting disoriented and fearful, repeatedly moving away from them.
At one point, paramedic Deanna LaMere allegedly decided the situation called for the use of a chemical restraint in the form of the incapacitating drug ketamine. With the assistance of other responders, Foster was “held down and injected against his will,” the lawsuit claims. “However, instead of injecting him with ketamine, LaMere injected him with a lethal dose of the paralytic medication rocuronium,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims body-cam footage shows Foster soon was gasping for air while asking, “Am I gonna die?” and repeatedly crying, “I can’t breathe.”
“You’re not gonna die, you’re fine,” Sioux City Police Officer Alan Schmeckpeper allegedly replied.
“LaMere realized that she had given the incorrect and life-threatening medication rocuronium, but she did not notify anyone, nor did she take any action to protect his airway and/or intubate him before he became paralyzed and unable to breathe,” the lawsuit states. “Not a single person on-scene mentioned Mr. Foster’s objectively obvious respiratory distress and, instead, police officers handcuffed the chemically incapacitated Mr. Foster and strapped him to a gurney.”
Minutes later, Foster lay motionless with his eyes open and one of the individuals on scene told him, “Night-night,” the lawsuit claims.
In an ambulance en route to a hospital, Foster’s heart stopped and LaMere allegedly called ahead and falsely reported Foster had been given a dose of ketamine. Upon their arrival at the hospital, the lawsuit alleges, LaMere “finally informed medical personnel that she had injected him with rocuronium. She then continued her clumsy cover-up when she improperly disposed of the vials of rocuronium and ketamine in a sharps container in contravention of Sioux City Fire and Rescue’s policies and procedures.”
Foster died two days later, allegedly from an anoxic brain injury due to the administration of rocuronium, according to the lawsuit.
Criminal charge filed in the case
The lawsuit claims LaMere falsely recorded in an incident report that she had conducted an advanced life support assessment of Foster when she arrived on scene, although body-cam footage reportedly shows that this was never done. LaMere also is alleged to have falsely recorded that she and her EMT partner had verified the correct dose of the injection administered to Foster,
In addition, the lawsuit alleges LaMere “had one or more incidents similar to the one at issue in this lawsuit that she was not properly disciplined, retrained or dismissed and her employment continued despite her previous failures endangering multiple patients.”
The lawsuit seeks compensation for past and future economic losses and funeral and medical expenses, plus punitive damages. The city has yet to file a response to the allegations, and a representative of the city’s legal department declined on Tuesday to comment on the case.
The individual Sioux City employees named as defendants in the case include LaMere, Drake Carnahan, Dustin L. Johnson, Brandon R. DeRocher, Jordan Reinders, Jim Haden and Randall Wood of Sioux City Fire and Rescue, as well as Schmeckpeper, Carolina Ochoa and Donette Sassman of the Sioux City Police Department.
Separate from the civil lawsuit, court records show that on Jan. 16, 2025, LaMere was criminally charged with involuntary manslaughter and that she entered a not-guilty plea on Feb. 3, 2025.
According to an affidavit filed by Assistant Woodbury County Attorney Loan Hensley, LaMere realized her error when she went back to the ambulance to give what she believed would be a second dose of ketamine to give Foster. LaMere, Hensley states, “did not take the appropriate actions” at that time, and “did not take the appropriate steps to notify anyone or treat the patient any different. It wasn’t until they got to the emergency room at Mercy One Medical Center that the defendant told the ER physician about the medication error.”
A pretrial conference in the case is scheduled for July 18, 2025.
State records indicate LaMere’s paramedic license with the Iowa Bureau of Emergency Medical and Trauma Services is in good standing, with no history of public disciplinary action, and that it expires in March 2027.
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