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An autopsy is planned for today to determine why a 43-year-old Grafton woman died as she left Lambeau Field late Sunday.
Jennifer Semmann was leaving the NFC championship game and suddenly collapsed, said Brown County Medical Examiner Al Klimek. Semmann had no significant medical history and was sitting in indoor skybox seats for the game.
“She wasn’t exposed to the elements,” Klimek said. “She was exiting the stadium after the game and just went down. We have to figure out what happened here.”
Semmann, an elementary school principal in Germantown, is survived by her husband, Mark, and two daughters.
Ashwaubenon Public Safety Cmdr. Jim Skorczewski said medical personnel were dispatched to Valley View Road at True Lane at 10:24 p.m. for a report of a female passed out. When public safety crews arrived three minutes later, they found Semmann wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.
Skorczewski said EMTs faced serious challenges treating Semmann because of the cold. Oxygen masks and devices use to help the patient breathe froze, and rescue workers — working without winter gloves — lost dexterity as their fingers became numb in the cold.
“The conditions out there made it terrible,” Skorczewski said, noting that Semmann’s condition did not change while rescue crews were on scene. Green Bay’s ambulance arrived at 10:41 p.m. and transported Semmann through postgame traffic to St. Vincent Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 11:11 p.m., Klimek said.
Green Bay Assistant Fire Chief Don Phillips said an accurate hospital arrival time was not captured in the city’s dispatch records.
Phillips said rescue crews assigned to Lambeau Field were twice as busy as normal. Crews handled six transports from the stadium, compared with the two or three they see at a regular-season game.
They weren’t weather-related emergencies, either, Phillips said.
“It was slips, trips and falls and alcohol calls,” Phillips said. “There were a few people with exposure issues, but certainly not to the magnitude we were expecting.
“We were prepared for more.”
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