EMTs pull drunken teen from ravine

A teenage boy’s night of alcohol consumption ended in the early hours of June 11 with an ambulance ride to Nassau University Medical Center. Emergency responders hauled him, drunk and nonresponsive, out of a ravine in the woods behind Brookside School in North Merrick, said James Rogers, first assistant chief of the community’s fire department.

The teenager, a student at Calhoun High School, also in North Merrick, had a “severe case of alcohol poisoning,” said Calhoun Principal Nicole Hollings in an email to parents on June 12. He drank at a “large gathering” of Calhoun seniors in the woods between Brookside and the Meadowbrook State Parkway, Hollings wrote. (Brookside houses the administrative offices of the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, which oversees Calhoun. Central District Superintendent John DeTommaso said the woods are state land, not school property.) Fellow partygoers called 911, saving their classmate’s life, according to Hollings.

“The last day of classes could have very easily been a tragedy-filled day at Calhoun,” Hollings wrote. “The student is lucky to be alive, and I am thankful that a group of students stayed, helped and called an ambulance.”

Rogers said he was one of about 25 North Merrick emergency medical technicians and firefighters who responded to the 12:40 a.m. 911 call. Nassau County and state police officers also rushed to the scene.

Lifting the teen out of the gully was difficult, Rogers said. It was dark. The patient was large. The ground was steep. Firefighters used a Stokes basket — a metal structure commonly used in helicopter rescues — to carry the teen out.

The episode occurred even though Hollings had emailed parents on June 10 to report rumors that seniors were planning a party that night in the woods by Brookside. DeTommaso said the district also asked Uniondale company Summit Security Services to keep watch at Brookside. A photograph that the Herald Life obtained shows a Summit SUV parked that night outside Brookside as emergency vehicles’ lights flashed at the woods’ edge.