Recording: Woman kicked out of Fla. hospital lay outside 18 minutes before dying
Barbara Dawson lay on the ground after collapsing in Blountstown, Fla. on Dec. 21. Dawson collapsed while being escorted in handcuffs from the hospital, where she sought treatment for breathing difficulties, Blountstown Police Chief Mark Mallory said. (Courtesy of the family of Barbara Dawson via AP)
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. » A woman who collapsed and later died after being forcibly removed from a Florida hospital lay in the parking lot beside a police officer’s car for nearly 18 minutes before a doctor readmitted her, according to police dash-cam audio and video released on Wednesday.
Attorneys for the family of Barbara Dawson renewed their charges of negligence against Liberty Calhoun Hospital and Blountstown Police as multiple state agencies continue their investigation into Dawson’s Dec. 21 death.
“We have heard that time and time again how everyone was acting with due speed to assist her. Now that we have that tape we know that is not true,” attorney Darryl Parks said. “There was not deliberate speed and who was assessing her at the side of the car was inconsistent.”
The Tallahassee law firm Parks & Crump received the video on Monday night and reviewed it. The family saw it for the first time following a press conference where media received the video.
“We think what they did was put criminality over health care. We think what they did here was compromise public safety by failing to give her the medical attention that she deserved and needed,” said state Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, who is a co-counsel for Dawson’s family.
The recording is roughly 2 ½-hours long, but only the first half covers what happened at the hospital. The recording begins with the officer arriving at the hospital. He enters the 57-year-old Dawson’s hospital room and tries to persuade her to leave. The officer tells Angela Donar, who is Dawson’s aunt and also in the room, “she can walk out peacefully or be arrested.”
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Dawson repeatedly replies, “I can’t breathe.” Her tone is panic-stricken.
After refusing to seek health care elsewhere, Dawson is arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing. The oxygen hose is disconnected and the officer walks the 270-pound woman out to the police car, holding her by the arm, nudging her along.
Dawson falls to the ground 1 to 2 feet from the patrol car while the officer reaches for his keys. Dawson cut her feet and knees.
After she collapses, the officer tells Dawson that “falling down and laying down, that’s not going to stop you from going to jail. If I have to get help to get you in this car. … You are only making things worse on you.”
For 18 minutes she lay propped against the police cruiser as the officer and nurses made multiple attempts to get her into the car. The nurses also checked her pulse. Not until a doctor came out was she readmitted.
“Get her on the stretcher. This is totally different from what I discharged her for,” the doctor says on the recording.
The Blountstown police officer who arrested Dawson is heard saying that he thought Dawson “was being non-compliant by not trying to get in my car and faking it.”
When Dawson was brought back into the emergency room, one of the nurses is heard saying, “I’ve never seen Barbara down like this.”
The medical examiner’s office found that Dawson died from a blood clot due to being excessively overweight.
“Why didn’t she get the benefit of the doubt from the hospital and police department? Not only that but the benefit of humanity?” attorney Benjamin Crump asked.
Calhoun Liberty Hospital CEO Ruth Attaway said in an emailed statement that they have also received a copy of the video and are still reviewing it. Attaway also reiterated that the hospital is cooperating with state investigations and is in the process of setting up a community task force with local leaders to review hospital practices.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman Steve Arthur and Agency for Health Care Administration communications director Mallory Deason said their investigations are ongoing. Jackie Schutz, the communications director for Governor Rick Scott, said their office has been in communication with FDLE, AHCA and the state NAACP.
Eight members of Dawson’s family attended Wednesday’s press conference, including Dawson’s cousin Martha Smith Dickson, who spoke for the family.
“The police is supposed to protect and serve. The hospital is supposed to save lives. When Barbara went to the hospital she was denied all of those rights,” she said. “So her family is saying today we cannot bring her back therefore we want justice for Barbara so that this will not happen to anyone else.”
51 responses to “Recording: Woman kicked out of Fla. hospital lay outside 18 minutes before dying”
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Is it just me, but I only hear the audio; no video.
Looks like only the audio is released to the public. Same problem with the local cop shooting case in Waikiki?
You are seeing the video, there’s nothing to see. What you hear occurred outside the view of the camera.
What? No Obamacare?
Can’t be *Patient Dumping*….similar to Michelle Obama who helped create the program at the University of Chicago Medical Center right?
Probably, if she had Obamacare she might have been treated. A Republican issue.
What a moronic statement.
I agree Lee1957 but, forgive her… she’s a moronic democrat.
amela might be right. Florida is one of the states that did not expand Medicaid. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that nearly 1,000,000 uninsured Floridians would have been eligible for expanded Medicaid. Hospital routinely provide the minimum care to uninsured patients because the hospitals know the uninsured do not pay. So, is Ms. Dawson one of the 1,000,000 uninsured? Hard to say but I would suggest the following – if she had private insurance and complained of shortness of breath, the hospital would have never discharged her because additional care would have been paid for and leaving her in would have reduced their risk in the event she experienced complications. If she had medicaid, they would have probably sought approval to keep her in for the same reason. Think about it.
amela, perhaps you are unaware that it was a Republican President that passed a law forcing hospitals to treat anybody who shows up at the Emergency Room whether they can pay or not.
But they don’t always follow it. My friend had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was turned away from the first ER she was taken to (she had no insurance). Fortunately, there was another one that did accept her.
Just another family looking for a payout, the lady was obese and probably would have died no matter what,
Probably denotes some doubt or unsure of?
This report omits everything that lead up to the woman being removed from the hospital and ending up by the Police car. I have a feeling there is much more to this story.
All of us are going to die, the issue here is was a lack of care or negligence a contributing factor is her death. If so the family has a cause for action. Sure seems like it.
Maybe this is more a case of belligerence by the patient than negligence by the hospital.
Exactly what I was thinking. As much as I feel for this person, could it be she ‘cried wolf’ too many times? With reporting like this, anything said is all speculation.
Belligerence? She is complaining of shortness of breath, she was on oxygen, collapses in the parking lot, and dies from a blood clot in her lung. The symptoms were right in front of them and the hospital blew it.
Thank you, Dr. ball…
Uh-huh… Like, how do we know she didn’t deserve to die, right?
Cheeseball: Easy for you to analyze the competence of this emergency department, and the history of this patient, when, in actuality, you have much more bias than factual knowledge.
Needed a better doctor. The hospital will be sued.
We all gonna die sometime no matter what so the hospital is off the hook? If that was my family-member, you can bet I’d be there looking for justice.
Everybody’s going to die “no matter what.” So, I guess she might as well get her dying over with in a hospital parking lot, propped up against a police car with the the very last words she hears on earth being threats from the officer about what he’ll do to her if she continues dying.
Tell me, how many years do you have left, and how much do you figure they’re worth to your family?
@tsboy, that’s a statement pretty lacking in compassion. Maybe she wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t discharged her?
DISPICABLE!
What, your spelling?
calentra….good one.
Thrombosis clot?
America will continue to be the laughing stock of the world.
Can we find a pony in this azunga? She’s in a better place now? free of all worldly cares?…
Managed care!
police are incompetent here. They can’t recognize when something went seriously wrong.
Oh, so now they’re MDs too.
270 pounds? Sounds morbidly obese. We choose our own fate by not taking care of our body. Shape up folks and stay trim.
Very nice lawsuit. What dumb officers, nurses, etc. They will cost the hospital millions. At a minimum, she should have been put in a wheelchair, probably with oxygen.
The story is missing the whole background – why was she in the hospital, why were the police there to remove her from the hospital, etc. If she was there for something related to blood clots (pulmonary embolism) symptoms, I think the hospital was negligent is not treating the condition that killed her. If she was admitted for something entirely different (just off the top of my head, for example, a sprained wrist) and then the hospital had to deal with her refusing to leave, then I wonder if it’s a case of the boy crying wolf — lying to doctors and not cooperating means you lose credibility when something serious does happen. I think the background to this story is important. I also think doctors deal with liars all the time — people who just want drugs, or who claim to have chest pain when stopped by police during DUI, etc., — and those people ruin the system for the people who truly need emergency care. Try going to Queen’s emergency at 2:00 a.m. and see what I mean.
Yeah, why report this if they don’t have the entire story. This is just a snippet of what happened.
Because this is the SA. I’m surprised they didn’t edit this down to one of their 2 paragraph stories.
Been to Queen’s ER at 02:00. No one to my knowledge was left to die in the parking lot.
Hungry lawyers’ dream day.
Yep. And one of those lawyers is a politician too.
What determines whether this story has legs is what race the officer happened to be. The fact that Benjamin Crump is involved already suggests what it is.
Why does everybody hate Blacks to death?
Of course “everybody” means Blacks too, yes?
Well, the way the men are killing each other in urban areas leads me to believe they don’t like each other.
speaking for yourself?
I not black. Trouble is coon, rabbit, cow, horse, chicken, sheep, jckass, and mook we’re already taken.
…And, you’re that stuff that drops out the south end of ALL those northbound critters. Mighty wide of you not to discriminate.
At Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, there is a like a banner on the wall in big letters. Something about we help you even if you have no insurance. I remember reading this. I feel sorry for this woman family. Sue that hospital and get the Police Officer fired. We have some HPD officer here in Hawaii who think they know it all and are just plain stupid. Not all are like that but a big 90% are. God Bless.
When the woman was being discharged from the hospital, where was her family to take her home?