BARTLETT, TN - Wayne Ables says he doesn't mind paying a fine for having expired tags. But Ables says the way it was handled by a Shelby County Sheriff's deputy may have led to his mother's death.
"My mom," says Ables, "was in the backseat. I was taking her to the hospital and her head had fallen over and was resting on her walking stick on her hand. And uh, that's the hard part. That's the image I've got to live with the rest of my life and the sound of hearing my mom go through that and knowing she could've been at the hospital in ten minutes."
The distance from where Ables was stopped by the deputy and St. Francis Hospital in Bartlett, where he was headed, is eight-tengths of a mile. Ables says he measured it.
Investigators with the Shelby County Sheriff's Office confirm that Ables was pulled over because he had expired tags on his truck.
He says he told the deputy, "Please, please, my mom can't breathe. Let me get her to the hospital."
But Ables says the deputy told him no. Instead the officer called for an ambulance.
"It seemed like at least ten minutes, maybe longer and that whole time my mother's getting worse and worse," says Ables. He also says the deputy wasn't very cordial.
"She's back there gasping for air and he's walking away'" says Ables. "And it was several minutes away before he brought my license and insurance papers."
Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell tells myEyewitnessNews.com the traffic stop is under investigation.
"Situations like this require extreme judgment," says Sheriff Luttrell, "and it's very difficult to write a protocol for every judgment-type situation. So we'll take a look at it and if it's a training issue, we'll emphasize that to our officers."
Ables says it's just a matter of common courtesy.
"Just make sure," he says when asked about the deputy who stopped him, "just make sure when he's with his mom he gives her a big hug and tells her he loves her. And hope what happened to my mother will never happen to his mother."
