SAN ANTONIO—The death of a man at an apartment complex is being reviewed after police complained it took several calls and about 20 minutes before an ambulance arrived.

Osvald “Javier” Barrera, 45, was pronounced dead late Wednesday, more than an hour after police responded to a disturbance allegedly involving Barrera at the local complex.

Two officers performed CPR on Barrera while waiting for paramedics to arrive. “We continued until we both got tired and then we switched,” one officer wrote in a report. “We called for EMS again and they did not make the scene still.”

Fire Chief Charles Hood said department leaders are trying to determine how long it took paramedics to arrive, but “there was probably a miscommunication, obviously, between police and our unit.”

One ambulance was dispatched for the man Barrera allegedly assaulted with a hammer, but dispatchers may not have understood a second was needed, Hood said. The other man’s condition was not immediately known.

“We had a hard time determining that there were multiple patients,” Hood said. “It sounds like it was a chaotic scene.”

Barrera was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital. Barrera’s attorney said his family believes he died of a heart attack.

Deborah Foster, a spokeswoman for the fire department, said Friday dispatch reports are being compared with 911 tapes, but it’s unclear how long the review would take.

In December, the department was criticized after paramedics mistakenly presumed a 23-year-old car accident victim was dead and left the scene for hours until a medical examiner’s investigator noticed she was breathing. Those paramedics were disciplined.