The Reason This 7-Year-Old Student Died at School Will Infuriate You

Would you send your child to a school without CPR-trained staff?

Noelia Echavarria, a 7-year-old girl, was choking on her sandwich at lunch but didn't receive medical attention until the damage was done. Her family blames staff at her Brooklyn public school for their lack of urgency to attend to Noelia, who arrived at the hospital brain-dead and spent 10 days on life support at NYU Langone Medical Center before passing away.

"They should have saved her life," said her mother, Ana Iris Santiago, who was hospitalized after experiencing multiple seizures in response to seeing Noelia in her critical state.

The school did not call 911, and a private EMT was flagged down by a staff member on the street while coincidentally transporting another patient. According to the medic, Qwasi Reid, Noelia was already blue, which indicates that she had been choking for some time. He added that no one seemed to have been taking any action before he got there. "People were screaming, but no one was doing anything," Qwasi said.

Qwasi was later suspended by his work for stopping at the school without receiving an official call. But had he not been driving past the school, it's difficult to say what could have happened to Noelia.

The family's attorney says he is planning to file a wrongful death suit against the city early next year, but Principal RoseAnn ­LaCioppa notified parents that her staff is indeed equipped to handle such emergencies. In addition, a Department of Education spokeswoman agreed that the "principal and faculty responded swiftly to the emergency."

However, the family's concerns were reignited after receiving an anonymous letter claiming that safety staffers at the school had not been properly prepared at all by the CPR training company.

"Please be advised that this student was not helped and provided lifesaving CPR due to none of us at the school being properly trained . . . Emergency Skills Inc. does not properly train employees and the trainers give passing grades to staff who are not passing the course, and more importantly, issuing certifications to staff who did not attend the CPR courses," the letter states.

A city Law Department spokesman said that the city is reviewing the matter, and Noelia's uncle, Alex Santiago, hopes that the school decides to take action before another family has to endure a similar tragedy.

"Our whole family is hurt. And when I say hurt, it's hurt. They destroyed our family," Santiago said. "You have all these people still working in this school, with a bunch of kids, who are not trained to do nothing. If anything else happens, then what? Another family's got to go through the same suffering we went through, because they don't want to do their job right or nothing? It's not right."