ST. LOUIS — The woman who called 911 to report Cora Faith Walker had collapsed in a hallway at a downtown hotel told the I-Team Monday she did not see anything suspicious during the incident and has struggled to cope since learning the 37-year-old died.
The woman spoke exclusively to the I-Team and asked that her identity not be revealed, saying she is from out-of-town and was staying at the Live! By Loews hotel in downtown St. Louis with her daughter for an athletic event on March 11.
She said the resuscitation efforts she saw used on Walker — a top aide to St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and close personal friend of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones — included the use of a defibrillator at the hotel as well as a CPR machine by responding paramedics.
She said paramedics had an IV bag out and checked Walker’s blood sugar.
Walker’s death prompted an outpouring of support from local and national political leaders as well as speculation after the St. Louis Police Department assigned a DEA task force officer to the case.
The I-Team has confirmed through multiple sources familiar with the investigation that preliminary toxicology results were negative for drugs, but Public Safety Director Dan Isom added Walker’s cause of death will not be determined until a final toxicology report is in.
That could take weeks.
The 911 caller said did not see responders use Narcan, an opioid reversal drug.
“If they did, I had no clue,” she said.
RELATED: Preliminary toxicology report following sudden death of Cora Faith Walker negative for drugs
Isom referred questions about the preliminary toxicology results to the Medical Examiner, who could not be reached for comment Monday.
He also said that a task force officer was assigned to “look into” Walker’s death because of all of the rumors about what caused her death, but that officer was not acting on behalf of the federal agency during the investigation.
Isom confirmed the officer had to get subpoenas for the hotel surveillance footage.
A spokeswoman for the DEA told the I-Team, “We do not discuss investigations including whether or not an investigation has been opened."
Isom called the 911 caller a “good Samaritan.”
The caller told the I-Team she wasn’t the only one.
“I thought it was great that so many people jumped in to try to help someone we didn't know,” she said.
The caller told the I-Team she was on a treadmill inside the hotel’s gym along with another man shortly before 9 a.m. when a woman opened the door to the gym.
“She said, ‘Can we get some help here please?’ And I could tell something was wrong, so I ran off the treadmill, went outside the door and she was on the ground,” the woman said. “I had my phone with me because I had just been listening to my music and I called 911.”
The caller put the 911 dispatcher on speaker and the dispatcher walked the three people through how to perform CPR.
“It was traumatic when it happened,” she said. “I've never experienced anything like that before, but what hit me the most was when I saw the article and her face because we were more focused on trying to save her life than anything.
“The article hit me harder because it put more of a face to a name, and I had told myself that she made it, and I figured I would never know otherwise. And then to find out that she didn't make it, it was really, really sad.”
The 911 caller said a hotel maid saw Walker collapse in the hallway, and the maid said it looked like Walker had a seizure.
“A woman was down, and we did our part to call 9-1-1 and do CPR and try to revive her until the paramedics got there,” she said. “And that's all we did.
“It was me and two other people that were there, and I don't know who they are either. One of them happened to be in the gym and the other one had just left the gym.”
The caller said the hotel manager eventually helped, too.
“The EMT guy over the phone was asking me if she was breathing, I panicked and I was like, ‘I can't even tell if she's breathing or not,’” the caller said. “I honestly couldn't tell.
“He just told us to not to stop compressions. So the guy kept doing compressions until the hotel manager got there with the defibrillator, and then the hotel manager took over because he was trained in the defibrillator process.”
The caller said a woman was checking for Walker’s pulse found a weak one.
“They kept saying they couldn’t get her back into a normal sinus rhythm,” the caller recalled. “They just continued to use the defibrillator and I said, ‘Why do are they continuing to do that?’ And somebody said they were trying to get her back into normal sinus rhythm. By the time I left, she had not achieved the normal sinus rhythm yet and they were going to take her to the hospital because they had done everything they could for her.”
Isom said EMS was dispatched to the hotel at call came in at 8:58 a.m. EMS arrived at the hotel six minutes later. An ambulance arrived at 9:13 a.m., and left for the hospital at 9:39 a.m. The ambulance arrived at the hospital at 9:46 a.m. and Walker was pronounced dead at 9:58 a.m. at the hospital.
The 911 caller said Walker was fully clothed, wearing a jacket and an Apple watch and had her purse with her.
The caller said she was surprised to hear how much suspicion has grown surrounding the woman’s death.
“I guess maybe it's because of who she is or whatever,” she said. “But to me, everything went as far as you would expect it to when you happened upon somebody who collapsed, you don't know who she is, you don't know if there's any medical history, you have no idea who she is, you just want to try to save her life.
“I don't feel like there was anything bad that went on. I don't feel like there was any shortcomings. To me, it's people seeing someone who needed help and reacted, and that's all that happened.”