Two city emergency medical technicians were hospitalized after they were attacked by an emotionally disturbed Bronx man they were trying to render care to, police said.
The EMTs were dispatched to an apartment on the seventh floor of a building on Sedgwick Ave. near West Burnside Ave. in Morris Heights just after 10 p.m. Thursday when 22-year-old Jose Bencosme attacked them in the hallway, cops said.
No weapon was used, but one EMT, 32, suffered a deep laceration to his head during the attack that needed staples to close, cops said. A second EMS staffer, 20, suffered injuries to his face during the assault.
Both were taken to area hospitals where they were treated for minor injuries.
Three other EMTs were also hurt trying to get into the building to help their assaulted colleagues, cops said. One of the three cut his hands on glass as he tried to bash down the locked glass door, police said.
EMTs were called to the building to care for a man with an “altered mental status,” an FDNY official said.
Bencosme has no history of mental illness, cops said. It wasn’t immediately clear what led to his emotional distress.
Arriving police took Bencosme into custody without incident.
After the arrest, building crews could be seen clearing pieces of broken glass on the first floor, ABC Eyewitness News reported. Blood was also found on the hallway floor and walls.
Cops charged Bencosme with two counts of assault. His arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Friday.
This is Bencosme’s first arrest in the city, police said.
Thursday’s assault comes as the unions for city EMTs, paramedics and officers are hammering out a new contract with the city that they hope will ease the crippling pay disparity between them and other city first responders.
During a City Council hearing last month, union heads warned that a third of the city’s emergency medical technicians and paramedics are expected to leave this year because the pay parity issue has left them so destitute that they’re living in homeless shelters.
Such a devastating drop in personnel would certainly delay response times for medical emergencies, which have already increased by more than two minutes since 2021, Oren Barzilay, the president of the EMT union, Local 2507, told the council.
At the same time, more EMTs and paramedics are being physically abused out in the streets, union members said.
Between 2018 and 2021, the number of assaults against EMS member more than doubled, Barzilay said in an op-ed piece to the Daily News in 2023.