[Dion]

So when a Shelby County Sheriff's deputy stopped him for an expired tag, he thought the officer would let him get his mother to Saint Francis Hospital-Bartlett, less than a mile away. He even suggested the deputy follow him and write the ticket there.

The deputy, whom the department has not identified, declined, according to Ables, and began checking Ables' license and insurance while calling an ambulance to take Vernice Ables from the scene.

The Sheriff's Office is investigating.

"If I could have taken my mom when I first told him, I could have gotten her to the hospital. She would not have had the indignity of screaming and begging to breathe in the back seat of my car," he said.

Ables knows his mother probably would have died that night. Doctors at the hospital told him that.

Still, he thinks the encounter with the deputy could have been handled with more compassion.

When the ambulance finally came and his mother was on her way to the hospital, where she would be pronounced dead, the deputy let Ables go without writing a ticket for the expired tag.

The deputy's last words, according to Ables, were "Don't speed."

"And he wasn't nice about that," Ables said. "No compassion at all. Not a bit of compassion."

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...hort-man-says/