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NAPLES, Fla. - Fox 4 is continuing the fight to get a distraught southwest Florida family and you answers after the death of their son.

Chaz Minard, 25, went into cardiac arrest and died more than a month ago. A Fox 4 investigation discovered a 5-6 minute delay before Collier County EMS responded to the call, after being dispatched.

The family says that gap could have cost their son his life.

Our investigation discovered ambulance crews were delayed because they never heard the call over the radio. A combination of the crew cleaning and vacuuming and the radio not working contributed to the delay.

We also discovered the county didn't follow its own procedures - waiting four minutes instead of two - to check in on the crew after they didn't respond.

For two weeks we have been trying to get this information out of the county but they have stonewalled us and ignored our phone calls. The county has only responded to our public records requests because they have to by law.

State Sen. President Pro Tempore Garrett Richter says his heart goes out to the family and confirms the county is investigating the situation.

"If there's some good that can come out of this investigation," said Richter, "relative to how services are delivered I think they should make the changes necessary and communicate that."

The county hasn't communicated to us or the family about what went wrong or what steps they will take to fix the mistakes we uncovered.

Richter told us the county manager is investigating the situation.

On Wednesday, we were told County Manager Leo Ochs was too busy to talk with us. So we left our contact information. We called his office Thursday and Friday asking his personal scheduler for five minutes of his time - our calls were not returned.

Matt Grant
mgrant@fox4now.com