Glenwood fire chief addresses ambulance response time after baby’s death

By JOE MAY | The Southern Standard

A five-month-old Glenwood girl died Tuesday, May 6, 2025, after there was no ambulance available to rush her to the hospital.

Pike County Sheriff Travis Hill told the newspaper that of the two Pafford ambulances stationed in the county, both were engaged at the time a call of an infant not breathing was received that Tuesday morning.

Hill said Pafford officials put their nearest available ambulance en route from Nashville, two counties over. However, officials on the scene realized that would be too late to save the infant’s life, so Glenwood Fire Chief Brent Staggs and GPD Officer Stacey Watson instead broke with protocol and placed the infant in the back seat along with the mother, and with Watson at the wheel and Staggs performing CPR, they set out to CHI St. Vincent Hospital in Hot Springs. Along the way, state troopers kept intersections open so the squad car would make it uninhibited to the emergency room.

“I’ve never been to Hot Springs so fast,” Staggs said. “Along the way, we actually passed a Pafford ambulance running full code to Hot Springs.”

Hill said a helicopter had been called, but due to a low cloud ceiling, it was not flying. An ambulance was slated to meet the patrol unit along the way, but Hill said a doctor told them to come directly to the hospital, as the time needed to transfer the infant would be detrimental to the situation.

“They really put it all out there,” Hill said of Watson and Staggs. “They deserve an award for trying to save that baby. Normally, officers don’t transport anyone to the hospital unless it’s one of our own guys, but this was a special situation and they made the right call. I applaud them for doing it.”

While no official could confirm it, the newspaper was told that a Pafford ambulance was in Glenwood with a patient at the time. State law does not allow an ambulance crew to pull of a scene even if a more serious call comes in.

Once at the hospital, Staggs said the baby was rushed into the emergency room, but did not make it. Along the way, he said he was able to restore the infant’s color, but could not get her to breathe on her own. He said the mother found the infant not breathing after having seen her healthy earlier that morning. Arkansas State Police are currently investigating the cause of death, but foul play is not suspected.

Pike County Judge Eddie Howard told the newspaper that Pafford officials called him after the incident, which was the first he had heard of it. “As I understand it, they were out of ambulances in [Pike] County,” he said. “They were headed that way from Nashville. It was the best they could do.”

The judge said the ambulances are not officially stationed anywhere in Pike County. “They have what they call rolling stations,” Howard explained. “They could be anywhere in the county.”

Staggs said his fear is that with Pafford having purchased the Baptist Health ambulance service in Clark County the situation may become more common. “We’ve had some mixups lately,” he said, adding that Pafford did call an off-duty paramedic to come to the scene with the baby, but the decision was made to transport the child before the paramedic could arrive. 

In the beginning, Staggs said Glenwood had no issues with Pafford’s response time, even though other areas had complained that the time was too slow. However, with the company expanding to Clark County, he said he fears that the local area may be faced with the situation more often of trucks being out in other areas, leading to longer response times.

“The ambulances used to beat us to the scene,” the fire chief said. “No one had to wait. Now we’re having to wait a little longer. We need to address the problem because now we’ve lost a baby.”

Staggs said that with Pafford having its own dispatch service in Hope that takes care of ambulances all over Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, the situation is made more complicated because local officials cannot communicate with Pafford and cannot know for sure when an ambulance will arrive. Noting that Pafford has expanded to both Clark and Saline counties lately, the chief said, “When you go to expanding a bunch, the smaller communities may get set aside.”

He commented that he had noticed the company’s newer ambulances had been moved to Saline County and that the trucks in Glenwood were older models. “They told me the new ones were in Saline County,” he said.

As for the Pike County Sheriff’s Office, Hill said he had just invested $1,000 for upgraded first aid kits for all squad cars should the situation arise again.

“We’re going to be prepared,” the sheriff said.