FERGUSON, Mo. — Jermaine Lacy wants to know why his step-uncle was recently taken by ambulance to a hospital only to be found dead on his neighbor’s porch just nine hours later.
It began Sept. 17 when Lacy noticed his uncle, Anthony Miller, was struggling to breathe.
“He was coughing and he made gag noises,” Lacy recalled. He left him in the care of his friend, and told her to call 911 if anything got worse. “I didn’t get no further than three miles away and she was calling 911.”
The ambulance picked Miller up at about 5:30 p.m. and the paramedics told Lacy’s friend and the concerned neighbors who had gathered outside that they were taking him to Christian Hospital.
Then, at about 2:30 a.m. Sept. 18, Lacy woke up to the sound of his neighbor banging on his front door.
“He was screaming, 'It’s a dead body on my porch!'” Lacy recalled.
He grabbed his shoes and started walking down his street. As soon as he saw the shoes dangling off the front stairs, he stopped. He knew it was his uncle. He had bought those shoes for him not long ago.
“Why was it so important to release a person of that age and of that health at 2 o'clock in the morning at the wrong address to die on somebody's porch?” Lacy said.
BJC Healthcare operates Christian Hospital. A spokeswoman told 5 On Your Side the healthcare system could not comment on this case because of patient confidentiality laws.
The neighbor who found Miller on his porch wants answers, too.
“It's not right. it's definitely not right,” James Phillips said. “He should've never been released.
“If an older gentleman or anybody of that age has chest problems and they go to the hospital, they should never have been released in the amount of time that he was.”
For Lacy, taking care of his uncle was one of his dying mother’s last wishes.
“My mother told me to look out for Tony because she was in bad health and I told her I would,” he said.
Lacy said his uncle lived a simple life, sometimes catching a bus to his favorite bar in the city. He cooked for himself and loved to watch Walker Texas Ranger episodes.
“He would drive me nuts with how much he would watch that,” Lacy recalled, laughing to himself.
But in recent weeks, he noticed his uncle was starting to slow down.
“It would take him every bit of five minutes just to walk around an SUV,” Lacy said.
Lacy noticed his uncle started leaving the gas on after cooking for himself. He sometimes forgot to flush the toilet. And every time he tried to eat, Lacy said it seemed like the food would get stuck in his throat.
On the day he went to the hospital, Miller was making gurgling sounds when he breathed, Lacy said.
Ferguson police were dispatched to the scene at 3:12 a.m. Sept. 18, according to a police report.
When they removed Miller’s hoodie to perform CPR, officers saw hospital leads on his chest and fluid coming from his mouth. There were no signs of trauma or injuries that led officers to believe the cause of death was anything but a medical emergency, according to the report.
A neighbor told them he was walking to the gas station at about 2:50 a.m. and didn’t notice anyone outside, but as he walked back, he saw what appeared to be a human figure lying on his neighbor’s steps, according to the report.
“He approached closer to inspect and further noticed that it was a person as his initial thought is that it may have been a Halloween decoration,” according to the report. “He tried to shake Miller to wake him up, but he was unresponsive.”
The man knocked on Phillips’ door, waking his overnight babysitter. The sitter then called Phillips and his fiancé Taylor Lovins, and they rushed home only to find Miller unresponsive on their front porch.
“I walked over and I grabbed him and he was already rock hard, stiff at that point,” Phillips recalled.
The police report states Miller was pronounced dead at 3:45 a.m.
A representative from the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s Office said Miller would not have an autopsy performed because there did not appear to be any foul play or drugs or alcohol involved in the death.
Should his family not claim his remains, he will be cremated and interred at a county-owned lot in a cemetery.
Lacy said he doesn’t have the money to afford a burial for his uncle, and he hasn’t seen the rest of his uncle’s family in years.
“I just can't believe that a hospital would do such a thing, and I just want to ask, that's all I want to know, ‘Why?’” Lacy said.