Dr. Decapitated By Faulty Elevator At St Joseph Hospital

Houston Chronicle ^ | August 17, 2003 | Peggy O'Hare

[Victoria Delsoul]

A really gruesome story to read. Thanks for the ping.

[happygrl]

Thank you for posting his picture.

Prayers going up for his family.

I do believe the Diabolical One was at work here.

[happygrl]

Isn't this from The Shining?

[neb52]

His death was horrible, I pray for his family. Losing a love one is bad enough, but losing one this way is just shocking. It makes you feel helpless and angry at the same time. It is so fustrating for things like this to happen, when we know they could of been prevented. Especially somebody like this. How many lives has he saved during his career?, How many lives has he improved and lengthen through his compassionate touch? He will be missed by many, some may not relize it until now that he is gone, but he will be missed.

[supercat]

A long time ago, when I was working my way through college, I worked as a security guard in a large building. One evening, about 7:30, the elevator's regulator had an "issue." Seems it mistakenly thought that there were several floors below the first floor, and so it didn't stop... until it hit the bottom of the shaft.

Once I was in an elevator at my brother's apartment building and, for some reason, the elvator would stop at floors one below what the button or light said (e.g. push "3" and the elevator move until the light said "3", and the doors would open, but the plaque on the far wall would say "2". Whether I was feeling stupid or lucky I don't know, but I decided to see what happened if I pushed the lowest basement button. Lights went down "B", "B2", "B3", and then there was a loud thump and the elevator moved up about 3 inches. It worked correctly after that.

[TC Rider]

RUDYARD KIPLING

1865-1936

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..

[VOA]

I will probably be accused of being an athiest troll, but I have to wonder where God
is when horrible, stupid things like this happen. Does God have a plan for everything?

I'm certainly no theologian, but I think there is an interesting passage in
Luke, Chapter 13, in which Jesus is asked about people dying in governmental
persecutions or accidents (the falling of a tower).
I'm suprised I haven't heard this passage addressed more in church, but I'll take a stab
at trying to explain what Jesus said.

To quickly sum up, he said that the people who perished didn't necessarily lose their lives
because they were evil.
BUT...people should take note of these sort of "unexpected exits" and
prepare themselves for the possiblity that they might be felled by similar freak accidents.

In other words "get right with God", because you might just not have a split-second
to clean up your life here before being taken away.

That's just my amateur exegesis of the passage...I'd gladly welcome correction/amplification
from other posters/lurkers.

[Petruchio]

An aspiring missionary doctor, who was voted by medical school classmates as the epitome of a good physician, was killed Saturday at Christus St. Joseph Hospital when an elevator malfunctioned, decapitating him, authorities said.

. . . (SNIP) . . .

A woman who also works at the hospital was on the elevator at the time and witnessed the accident, police said. Because of the malfunction, she was trapped on the elevator for 15 or 20 minutes before firefighters were able to reach her, police said.

Alt. Headline:

Doctor Loses Head over Woman

[Squantos]

Hmmmmm my garage door won't close if something is in the way..........what the heck is up with elevator technology following suit before they are part of a suit.........

Weird situation. Too bad yer friend was killed.

Stay Safe !

[Iwo Jima]

That's JCAHO : Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospitals.

Actually, it's "Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations." They do HMOs, PPOs, etc. now, too.

[Sir_Ed]

We were visiting Las Vegas last summer and went to Circus Circus. We parked on the roof. We got in the elevator, along with about twenty other people, and the door closed, went down a few feet and stopped. The temperature outside was in the 100's, and the elevator was packed to capacity. The elevator had NO phone and all the the emergency button did was ring a bell on the top floor, the roof, where no one heard us, as no one was on the top floor because it was summertime and extremely hot outside.

It immediately started getting extremely hot inside...so we began pounding on the doors, yelling and screaming, and finally someone heard us and went and got someone. A security guard came running, they tried to open the doors and were unable to. There were NO elevator staff in the casino at the time! In about twenty minutes the Las Vegas Fire Department came, and tried to help us...the temperature was unbelievable...the elvator doors were on the roof, exposed to direct sunlight, and there was NO ventilation, no fan, no nothing...by this time, everyone inside was feeling sick, faint, and we were covered in sweat. There was an elderly man with a heart condition in the elevator, a baby, and a teenager that was totally freaking out...the elevator was full, so we couldn't sit or move, and it was probably getting upwards of 140-150 degrees. The Las Vegas Fire Department Firemen didn't know what to do, they kept pushing buttons, the security guards didn't know what to do, nothing worked. Finally, I yelled through the door, "people are going to start dying in here if you don't get this door open," and I yelled for someone outside to break into a car, get a jack, and just pry the doors open, just to at least get us some fresh air. The security guards were saying they didn't want to break the elevator. I yelled back "if someone dies in here as a result of your neglingence, you're going to have a lot more to worry about than a busted elevator!"

Finally the Firemen were able to get a prybar and pry the doors open a few inches. They started passing us cold bottles of water and then they got a fan and placed it at the crack between the doors, which helped a bit.

We asked what the delay was, and they said the elevator guy was stuck in traffic! I told them to just pry the door open a few more feet, and we'd crawl out! The elderly guy was drenched in sweat, pale, but wasn't freaking out, the baby was crying and the teenager was crying that we were going to die, it was worse than anything I'd ever gone through. The Firemen told us that they were afraid that if they pried the doors open and we started crawling out, that the elevator might suddenly give way and we'd be hurt by the elevator falling on us as we crawled through the door!

Finally, after an hour and twenty minutes, they got the door open. There was a huge crowd gathered outside the doors, and they took us to their security headquarters where they interviewed us, gave us free T-Shirts, soft drinks and they gave each us a free night in their casino...big whoop.

The thing that struck me was their cavalier attitude about the whole thing...when I asked them why there was no phone, fan, vent or emergency open button, they told us the law didn't require it...when I asked them why their emergency buzzer didn't ring in the security guard booth, but only rang a bell next to the elevator door, where no on heard it, they said the same thing, that that elevator was grandfathered into an older set of laws that didn't require phones, vents, emergency buzzers that were wired into the security guard booth or elevator staff on duty at all times.

What also struck me is that NO ONE with Circus Circus EVER apologized to us! When we crawled out of the elvator doors (they never got the elevator to move...they just pried the doors open a foot or so, and we had to be pulled out through the crack) there were three guys in the corner, dressed in really expensive suits, executive/lawyer types, watching us, and they didn't walk over and apologize, they just stared at us. The casino manager at the time told us where they were taking us (they had some limos, vans, etc., to drive all of us to the HQ) but she didn't say they were sorry either, NO ONE said they were sorry it happened, except the Las Vegas Firemen!

The security guards that had been so nice to us, yelling through the door that help was coming, just stay calm, all just stared at us, and didn't say anything, like everyone had been told not to talk to us, for fear of admitting liability, or something.

The risk manager head, an Asian guy, told us that they thought we were overloaded, that it was our fault, too many of us went into the elevator at once, and I asked him how come there were no signs, then, or phones, or elevator staff, etc. he didn't have a good answer, other than to say that the elevators were grandfathered in. (The next morning, by the way, we went back and noticed maintenance guys running around to all the elevators and putting up Overload Capacity signs, as there were none earlier!) I asked him about remuneration for our lost day in Vegas, and he said "well, we gave you a free meal, an overnight stay and free T-Shirts...in our view, that's sufficient remuneration."

Well, we called the State of Nevada Elevator Board, and they said that those elevators were to have been replaced a year ago, as they were the oldest in Circus Circus, but they were in fact grandfathered in as far as not needing fans, vents, phones, emergency buzzers that rang into security guard booths, etc.

I also called the newspapers, but no one was interested. They said people get stuck in elevators all the time. True, but this elevator was on top of the roof, exposed to direct sunlight, and it was only by a true miracle that one of us didn't die. In fact, those first ten minutes, when we rang the emergency buzzer, and all it did was ring a bell outside the roof elevator door, if a lady hadn't heard us and ran and gotten the security guards, I'm absolutely sure that we all would have died.

It was only by a stroke of luck that the girl heard us at all. Nobody else was using the roof parking lot/elevators because it was 110 degrees outside, and hotter on the roof, and she was there only because she wanted to take her bicycle to the roof.

By the way, the elevator guy on the state board told us what happened...it seems that a safety sensor got too hot and tripped an auto-stop switch, it had nothing to do with the fact that the elevator was filled with people, it was that the sensor malfunctioned!

Needless to say, we will NEVER stay at Circus Circus again, EVER!!!

Ed

[Mark was here]

Same thing happened to a nurse in a Detroit hospital a few years ago.

St Joseph in Mount Clemens, I think the door opened and a bed was pushed in with someone on the way to surgery... never made it to the surgery... there was no elevator...

[Elsie]

I agree fuLLY!!!

Please tax ME a LOT more to get this job DONE!!!!

[Taliesan]

I think that passage is ignored unjustly, too. Jesus' response to "why do bad things happen to good people" was "the amazing thing is when bad things DON'T happen."

[MightyMouseToSaveThe Day]

"If things just happened and we had no part in bringing them about, then how can we be held responsible in this life or judged later on?"

I don't think we're judged by the things that happen to us accidentally. I think we're judged by our REACTIONS/RESPONSES to what happens to us. But, i'm just guessing, like you. Won't know until I face our Maker.

[united1000]

Dry cleaners hate it when this happens.

LOL

[MightyMouseToSaveThe Day]

"There is no such thing as a pat answer."

by the way, uh, yes. you've just provided an excellent example of a 'pat answer'.

[demkicker]

This is a HUGE lawsuit in the making. And how come elevator door motors are strong enough to decapitate???

Amen, brother. I can't imagine how this happened. The whole thing went haywire I suppose, and the elevator took off extremely fast to have severed his head.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Monkathon all day today on USA ( I saw your song )

[UncleDudley]

Yes patients not paying their bills is a big problem, but that is the case for most hospitals.

How big of a problem? Have you got a ballpark percentage of who doesn't pay?

What percentage of ER patients are illegal aliens?

BTW, thank you for the insight into poor hospital management.