CHRIS CHRISTIE: Woman Says Her Mother's Death Was Not Caused By "BRIDGEGATE" Scandal (Florence Genova)

#CHRISTIE

VILMA OLERI says "BRIDGEGATE" did Not cause the Death of her Mother Florence Genova, 91 as CNN Hosts proclaimed.

OLERI'S Mother was a Fort Lee, NJ resident & a CHRISTIE Supporter.


ARTICLE: "Woman Says Lane Closings Were Not To Blame For Her Mother’s Death"

The daughter of a 91-year-old woman from Fort Lee, N.J., who died on the day of a major traffic jam precipitated by top aides to Gov. Chris Christie said on Thursday that she did not believe the inability of an ambulance to reach her mother’s house was a factor in her death.

“I honestly believe it was just her time,” said Vilma Oleri, whose mother, Florence Genova, died on the morning of Sept. 9, the first day that the closing of local lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge set off the snarls.

A Fort Lee emergency official has said that the traffic jam prevented an ambulance from Englewood Hospital from reaching Ms. Genova’s home.

Ms. Oleri spoke inside her home in Closter, N.J. She said she had gone that morning to check on her mother, who lived alone in a two-story, red brick house on Harvard Place in the southern part of Fort Lee. Ms. Oleri said she called 911 after her mother went into the bathroom before breakfast and did not come out.
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Paul E. Favia, the emergency medical services coordinator in Fort Lee, complained in a letter to the mayor on Sept. 10 that the traffic problems caused “unnecessary delays for emergency services.”

Just before the call about Ms. Genova, Mr. Favia wrote that it took him seven minutes instead of the usual four minutes to arrive at the scene of a car crash where four people needed to be taken to the hospital.

“I, myself, was stuck in traffic on Fletcher Avenue and had to jump the curb and cut up West Street in order to avoid the standstill traffic,” he wrote.

It took a Fort Lee E.M.S. crew seven minutes to reach Ms. Genova, after they were detoured away from the traffic accident.

“The response time was only shortened by the fact that they were heading to the accident scene to assist when dispatched” to Ms. Genova, the letter says. Ms. Genova had gone into “cardiac arrest,” according to Mr. Favia’s letter.

Ms. Oleri said that Fort Lee emergency responders tried to revive her mother at her home, but that her mother showed no signs of life.

A neighbor said she watched the paramedics rush Ms. Genova onto a stretcher inside their waiting ambulance.

Mr. Favia wrote in his letter that after an ambulance with paramedics from Englewood Hospital could not get to Ms. Genova’s house, it met the Fort Lee ambulance on a street. The hospital paramedics tried again, but failed, to revive Ms. Genova. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

“We believe she died in her home, but they couldn’t pronounce her until she got to the hospital,” said Ms. Oleri’s husband, Frank Oleri. “The traffic didn’t make any difference.”

Ms. Oleri said she had no idea until Wednesday that her mother’s death had become a source of controversy.

“We want to stay out of it,” Ms. Oleri said. “It’s not political.”

She said her mother married an immigrant from Italy and had lived in the same Fort Lee house for more than 50 years. Though her eyesight kept her from driving a car for most of the last half of her life, she insisted on keeping a car in her garage even after her husband died, because she believed it would deter burglars by signaling that a man lived there.

“She was a pip,” Mr. Oleri said.

Ms. Genova was so secretive about her age — it was one of the few details that became public when the traffic scandal gave her posthumous notoriety — that she never told her family. A decade ago, she fell and broke her hip. Ms. Oleri said her mother yanked an emergency responder’s ear to her lips and whispered her age.

“She never told me; she was like that,” Ms. Oleri said. “I sneaked a look on the paramedic’s clipboard.”

Neighbors said Ms. Genova liked to sit in her dining room with the window shade open. Occasionally, a home health aide would visit, and sit her in the sunshine on her front stoop.

“That’s how we knew she was O.K.; the blind would be up,” said Connie Ciongoli, Ms. Genova’s neighbor for more than 50 years. “We would check on her.”

Ms. Genova and her husband were married more than 50 years. She loved her son and daughter and three grandchildren, Ms. Oleri said, though in recent years her memory had began to fail her.

Because of that, she did not vote in the last election of a governor. But she did in the one before.

“She voted for Christie,” Ms. Oleri said.


Sources: AP, LinkedIn, NY Times