Sun Metro Looking Into Family’s Complaint Over Special Needs Transportation

Sun Metro is looking into a complaint from an El Paso family regarding their transportation service for special needs passengers.

“They used to be very good about it. I don’t know what happened,” said Armida Passarelli, whose 30-year-old son Adrian Trujillo suffers from cerebral palsy and uses Sun Metro’s paratransport service to get to and from doctor’s appointments.

Passarelli said a Sun Metro driver arrived on time to pick her up along with her son and his care taker at the scheduled time on Monday afternoon. However, she became upset when the driver refused to take them straight home.

“(The driver) said he had to pick another patient up at 3:30 at (University Medical Center). I said, ‘Excuse me, it’s already 3:30,” Passarelli said.

The problem, according to her, is her son’s oxygen tank was running dangerously low and they had to get him home as soon as possible. She said they told the driver about the oxygen tank’s level, but the driver insisted he would only be able to take them home after the other patient was picked up.

Passarelli then got off the bus and called her nearly 80-year-old husband to pick them up in a van that is not especially equipped to handle a special needs passenger.

Sun Metro’s director Jay Banasiak said staffers are looking into the complaint. He said a dispatcher for the service was not aware of the special oxygen tank situation that required immediate assistance.

“Usually when people request to go home directly because of an emergency, we take them home and try to reschedule other people (who may have been scheduled for a pick-up service),” said Banasiak. “In this case, I don’t know if the (emergency) was relayed or not, the dispatcher said it wasn’t. We’ll look into it to see if there was a miscommunication.”

A Sun Metro spokeswoman said once they were made aware of the situation, dispatchers sent a cab to pick up Passarelli, her son and the caretaker. However, the family turned down the ride because the patient’s father was already on his way.