Posted on 05/21/2007 7:17:29 AM PDT by restornu
Edith Isabel Rodriguez died in the custody of Los Angeles County police, who had discovered she had violated her parole and were preparing to take her to jail.
Officials from those agencies would say little about the incident, but family members said there was no doubt that what happened was wrong.
Rodriguez, who went by the nickname Chavela, had gone to King-Harbor on the morning of May 8 because of intense abdominal pain.
Her boyfriend, Jose Prado, went to get something to eat; when he returned an hour later, he found Rodriguez on the floor in the emergency room lobby in obvious pain. She said something inside her had popped. Prado begged hospital personnel to do something, relatives said. When no one did, Prado went outside and called 911 from a pay phone.
"Nobody wanted to help him," said Marcela Sanchez, Rodriguez's sister. "When he tapped on the windows to tell the nurses that she needed help and that she was on the floor, they didn't want to pay attention to him."
Because Prado was already at a hospital, relatives said, the 911 operator told him no one could be dispatched there.
He then knocked on the door of the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.
Prado said he told the officers that Rodriguez was bleeding from her mouth. A sergeant responded in Spanish, "That's not blood. That's chocolate," Sanchez quoted Prado as saying. (Prado speaks only Spanish and Sanchez translated for him.)
As officers pushed Rodriguez in a wheelchair to a squad car so they could take her to the sheriff's station, she became unresponsive.
Hospital personnel were not successful in their attempts to resuscitate her.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Physicians diagnosed gallstones. Each time, documents show, she was treated and released, sometimes with pain medication.
Another victim of overcrowded emergency rooms? I wonder what we can do about that. Please excuse me for using English. I’m one of those insensitive people who doesn’t communicate in Spanish.
When I was young, I used to have nose bleeds at night. The blood would run down into my stomach and I would throw up. It did look like chocolate.
If this woman was lying on the ground and I was there, I would be screaming for someone to help her. I think there is more to this case.
No reason for a bitter heart that won’t help in the long run!
Tale of last 90 minutes of woman’s life [Los Angeles’ King Hospital ignores patient to death] Los Angeles Times ^ | 20 May 2007 | Charles Ornstein
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1836772/posts
I got a feeling being MLK there could be prejudice of who uses those county facilities?
the “Crips and the Bloods” we don’t know what all those colors wars are about with the street gangs!
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