Public Employee Press

EMS widow Laura Pearson gets line-of-duty medals

Emergency Medical Service Lt. Brendan Pearson died April 23, 2005, from complications that developed from surgery for an injury he sustained on the job.

At first, the Fire Dept. of New York City would not classify his death as line-of-duty. However, pressure from his widow, Laura, and DC 37’s Local 3621 convinced the agency to grant that recognition 10 months later, on Feb. 10, 2006.

Further recognition came on April 23, the second anniversary of his death, when agency officials presented the EMS and FDNY Line-of-Duty Death Medals to his widow.
The decorated 24-year veteran was seriously injured while lifting heavy equipment at Station 23 on Staten Island. After an operation that was considered successful, Pearson was walking the Victory Memorial Hospital floor with his wife, a nurse at the hospital, when he suddenly collapsed and died.

“There’s no doubt this was a line-of-duty death,” said Local 3621 President Thomas K. Eppinger, who pressed for the line-of-duty designation from the beginning. Both the pension system and the Workers’ Compensation Board granted the family line-of-duty benefits quickly after his death.

The FDNY has confirmed that it will add Pearson’s name to the Memorial Wall reserved for line-of-duty deaths at department headquarters in Brooklyn.

Eppinger is also working to have Pearson’s name added to the EMS National Memorial during EMS Week this spring and working with Staten Island Congress member Vito Fosella to get the federal Public Safety Officer Benefit for the Pearson family. “Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has not been processing these applications for the past two years,” said Eppinger.

The line-of-duty designation is important, he said, both to the family and “because it gives recognition to the hard work that members in the FDNY and EMS do every day by acknowledging the death of one of their own in the performance of duty.”