Women dies after being dragged from Hospital...

[Judi Lynn]

166. Homeless woman's death in police custody stirs anger in St. Louis

Homeless woman's death in police custody stirs anger in St. Louis
By Matt Pearce
March 29, 2012, 5:10 a.m.

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"She was not a drug dealer or a hooker or doing other things that she could've ended up dead for," said sister Krystle Brown, according the Post-Dispatch. "People assume things because of the way they talk or the way they live or the things they do. My sister is not here today because people passed judgment."

Hospital and police officials maintain that they did everything right. According to the Post-Dispatch, Brown showed up at SLU Hospital in St. Louis a week earlier complaining of leg pain after she said she’d sprained her ankle in a ditch; hospital officials said there were no sign of blood clots, as did the St. Mary’s Health Center officials who examined her the day she died. Richmond Heights acting Police Chief Maj. Roy Wright defended his officers' actions, saying the hospital had told them she was good to go.

"A lot of times people don't want to stay in jail and will claim to be sick," he told the Post-Dispatch. "We depend on medical officials to tell us they're OK."

The story is reminiscent of the 2007 case of Edith Isabel Rodriguez, a "quasi-transient" who showed up at what was then called Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Willowbrook, south of Watts, complaining of stomach pains. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as she vomited blood and went untreated -- a scene captured on video -- and two people called 911 to beg for help, without success. Rodriguez died at the scene, shortly after police had tried to arrest her on an outstanding warrant.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-st.-louis-homeless-woman-death20120327,0,171094.story