WASHINGTON (7News) — A grieving mother from Kentucky is suing Washington, D.C., to uncover the truth about her son’s sudden death.

Was it preventable? Did 911 operators make a mistake?

Those are the questions she’s desperate to answer, but her attempt to access the city’s emergency calls has been denied.

“It’s a struggle to keep moving forward and be a part of the world,” Stephanie Clemans, holding back tears, said during a Tuesday press conference.

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William Ostertag, known by friends and family as Will, was 28 when he was working in his apartment’s gym on November 3, 2024. He lived at the Allegro Apartments in Columbia Heights in Northwest, D.C.

Suddenly, he went into cardiac arrest and collapsed.

“I’m his mom, and I wasn’t there, and I want to know what happened,” Clemans said.

What she does know is that Will lived right next door to a D.C. Fire and EMS firehouse where paramedics could’ve come to his aid almost immediately.

Yet, according to the lawsuit below, it took them nine minutes.

By then, it was too late. Will had already lost oxygen to his brain and died 11 days later.

“My son was living, making plans, and successfully navigating adulthood. I am so completely proud of him,” Clemans said.

So what happened in those critical moments before his death?

Well, Clemans obtained a written timeline from the 911 dispatch system that shows dispatchers misclassified the original response as a “seizure”, sending an ambulance not equipped with the drugs on board that Will needed for a cardiac arrest.

But the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) has denied her requests for the 911 calls, falling back on their policy of only releasing 911 audio to the original caller.

“My nightmare is that my vibrant, very much alive son died, and people with power are saying to me that I do not have the right to hear what was happening as he lay on the ground,” Clemans said.

Kevin Bell, her lawyer and a partner at the Freedom Information Group, says her Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request appeal was also denied by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of Legal Counsel. A decision, he urges them to reconsider.

“I believe, looking at this case, that this is a pretext to attempt to avoid producing records, which are potentially embarrassing to the department and which would provide information that might reflect negatively on the performance of their statutory duties… I believe that this is an instance where government can do the right thing. They can release the information that’s been requested.”

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Will grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and had a little brother.

He lived in D.C. for three years, working for the federal government. He’d just applied for several MBA programs. He lived a full life, suddenly cut short, with a mom determined to get answers about his death.

“This audio recording will help me understand the end of my son‘s life, and it is necessary for me to have it,” Clemans said.

Clemans is scheduled to testify as a public witness in Wednesday’s D.C. Council Performance Oversight Hearing on OUC virtually at 9:30 a.m.

7News reached out to OUC and the Mayor’s Office for a comment on the lawsuit ahead of Cleman’s testimony.

As of this report, we have not heard back.

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Crews with D.C. Water are continuing to try to divert millions of gallons of sewage and wastewater from the Potomac River after the failure of a 6-foot sewer line last week.

The collapse of the pipe, called the Potomac Interceptor, which carries up to 40 million gallons of sewage and wastewater each day, led to crews establishing a workaround involving the installation of pumps and diversion of the waste into the C&O Canal, according to Sherry Lewis, spokesperson for D.C. Water.

The break occurred in a portion of the interceptor near the Interstate 495 interchange and the Clara Barton Parkway near the C&O Canal National Historical Park.

“This is a dry section of the canal that is contained,” Lewis explained.

She said the wastewater is being channeled downstream from the break, and back into the Potomac Interceptor.

By Monday, the crews were able to make significant progress in redirecting the flow of the wastewater, Lewis said.

“There is some residual wastewater in that area that needs to drain,” she added.

Lewis clarified that D.C.’s drinking water is not affected by the millions of gallons of untreated wastewater that were released by the collapse of the Interceptor.

“The drinking water is safe. There is no impact to it from this overflow,” she said. “The primary intake for the Washington Aqueduct’s drinking water supply is in Great Falls, so it is not anywhere close to where this overflow occurred.”

Lewis said the timeline for how long it might be before the 72-inch pipe could be repaired hasn’t been determined.

“It’s not an overnight fix when you’re talking about a 72-inch, 6- foot-diameter sewer pipe,” she said.

While D.C. Water cited progress on stemming the sewage flow in frigid temperatures, Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks told WTOP, “We’re grateful that the flow has been reduced, but there’s still raw sewage that’s coming into the Potomac River.”

“If this happened in the summer, I can assure you the entire river would be closed for public access and there would be public health notifications,” he said.

The National Park Service and D.C. Water have posted signs in the area notifying passersby that raw sewage poses a contamination hazard.

A news release from the Potomac Riverkeeper Network showed what the group called a “catastrophic impact” on the health of the Potomac River. Testing by Naujoks’ group Friday showed the presence of E. coli at nearly 12,000 times the amount allowed for safe human contact.

“Infrastructure failure is at the root of this disaster,” Naujoks said in the news release. “The interceptor pipe … should have been better maintained in order to avoid this catastrophe.”

D.C. Water issued a statement saying it’s allocated $625 million in its Capital Improvement Program to rehabilitate the Potomac Interceptor over the next 10 years.

In the same statement, D.C. Water said it’s been working closely with federal, state and local partners, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, Washington Aqueduct, D.C.’s Department of Energy and the Environment and Maryland’s Department of the Environment, among others.

“Together, we are coordinating efforts to contain the overflow, monitor and assess environmental impacts, and keep the public informed,” the release said.

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