Charged with attending to the aid of a 8-month-old girl who had stopped breathing, Detroit EMT Ann Marie Thomas seemingly did the unthinkable: she refused and stood idly by a block away while she waited for other EMTs to arrive. Now the girl, Aniyah Wright-Trussell, is dead, and Thomas has been summarily fired from her position.

As WDIV-TV reports, Thomas had been sent to the household of Aniyah’s mother, Janee Wright-Trussell, on May 30, after Janee called the fire department when Aniyah, who was born premature, had difficulty breathing.

Despite being only two minutes away at the time, Thomas somehow took six minutes to arrive, parked her car nearby, and then refused to enter the household, believing the family would be hostile to her. "I'm not about to be on no scene 10 minutes doing CPR, you know how these families get," she told her boss, according to WDIV-TV. Janee was forced to perform her own CPR on Aniyah.

Perhaps most heartbreakingly, at one point, a supervisor frantically pleaded with Thomas to help. "Ma’am, you have to make contact with your patient," they told Thomas. "There is nothing in the comments that states you have a hostile scene. You have to make contact with your patient!" But Thomas seemingly refused. It would take nearly 20 minutes for actual help to show up, and though Aniyah was revived at the hospital, she died the next day.

Last Wednesday, Thomas’ firing was made permanent by the Fire Commissioner, Edsel Jenkins. "Today, we conducted an appeals hearing, which Ms. Thomas requested. After reviewing all of the facts of this incident, I have determined that the appropriate course of action is to terminate Ms. Thomas' employment with the Detroit Fire Department effective immediately," said Jenkins in a statement.

Listening to the above audio clip of her refusal, however, it hardly seems like enough punishment for the now disgraced EMT.