LITTLE ROCK — It took Pamela Harper two days to die after her brotherin-law found her unconscious in his backyard that cold March morning.
Two ambulance crews had prematurely declared her dead before a coroner saw her breathe and sent the 52-yearold woman to a hospital.
Her death and the controversy over her treatment by emergency medical personnel had taken its toll on her husband, Tanny Harper.
On Saturday, he killed himself and the couple’s beloved cat.
“My life ended in March with Pam,” the 60-year-old widower scrawled in a note to his brother found near his body. “Sorry to leave you with a mess, but I haven’t been living since Pam died. You were a good brother.”
Harper’s brother, Jim Duckett, found the man and the couple’s black cat, curled up on the passenger-side floor, inside Harper’s truck outside the Harper home at 12701 Southridge Drive. The coroner’s report lists carbon monoxide poisoning as Harper’s cause of death. A hose leading from the truck’s exhaust pipe had been placed in the partially open passenger-side window.
Duckett and other family members didn’t return calls Wednesday.
Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper said he and his staff got to know Harper well in the months after his wife’s death. The widower called the office frequently and visited once to inquire about Camper’s investigation.
“He wanted some closure,” Camper said.
In June, Camper released a report critical of the first Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services crew that responded in Pamela Harper’s case. The crew failed to check her vital signs or use a heart monitor, the report said.
Pamela Harper was found dressed only in a tank top and underwear about 6:30 a.m. March 26 outside Duckett’s home on Hunters Cove Drive in west Little Rock.
The first crew said she was dead and left. Later, a detective saw her breathing and called a second crew. They also found no signs of life, and a doctor contacted by radio also pronounced her dead. But about 3 1 /2 hours after she was found, a coroner saw her breathing again.
The temperature ranged from 41 to 50 degrees during the hours she remained on the ground.
The state medical examiner attributed her death two days later to an intentional overdose of the narcotic painkiller Darvocet and alcohol.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 09/23/2010