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Caught On Tape: Woman Dies On Hospital Floor After Being Ignored More Than An Hour


A surveillance video tape shows Esmin Green,49, falling on the Kings County Hospital floor in New York convulsing and dying after being neglected help for over an hour by multiple hospital staff who seen her.

A video seen all around the world of mother of six, Esmin Green, dying on the hospital floor of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, is being viewed now as a symbol of a health-care system that failed terribly.

In the video which was captured by surveillance video cameras on June 19, Green, 49, is shown around 5:32 a.m. falling off a chair in the hospital waiting room as she lands face-down on the floor, convulsing at times til around 6:07 a.m. at which time she stopped moving. Even more shocking in the tape, during her time on the floor, multiple hospital workers seen her and, to put lightly, simply ignored her. It was not until more than an hour later that at 6:35 a.m. the videotape showed a hospital employee approach and nudge Green with her foot which help was then brought minutes later at which point, Green was dead.

Fellow church members say they served as a family for Esmin Green or “Sister Green” as she was known by, after she left Jamaica for New York, and Green also left six children in Jamaica with the youngest now 14.

“I haven’t seen it, and I don’t think I have the heart or mind to watch it because that’s my mother there,” Tecia Harrison, 31, Green’s oldest daughter, said to CNN in regards to the shocking video news. “That’s the woman who gave birth to me 31 years ago. I cannot watch that.”

Peter Pilgrim, a friend of Green, says he saw her just days before her death and stated “Esmin Green is a beautiful person. She has a good heart. She loved people, and she loved children.”

Green was involuntarily admitted to the Kings County Hospital’s psychiatric emergency department for “agitation and psychosis” on June 18.

Green’s pastor, who is now haunted by the decision, was the one who made the call to 911 because she says Green had been hospitalized with emotional problems before and appeared to be in distress again.

Green reportedly waited nearly 24 hours for treatment after her admission to the hospital, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation released a statement Tuesday saying it was “shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care,” and since, seven employees have been fired or suspended, according to James Saunders, a spokesman for the corporation which oversees the Kings County Hospital.

The Kings County Hospital is under federal investigation for abuse allegations, and a lawsuit stemming from 2007, that claims patients are subjected to face physical abuse and are injected with drugs to keep them docile at the hospital.

In 2007, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service sued Kings County in federal court, alleging that conditions at the facility are filthy and patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or on floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, the groups alleges. They also allege that patients often go without basic hygiene and clean linens.

In the case of Green, the hospital staff is also being accused of falsifying Green’s records to cover up the time she laid on the hospital floor without assistance.

“Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital’s video cameras, the patient’s medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was ‘sitting quietly in waiting room’ — more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor.”

Medical examiners are still trying to determine the exact cause of Green’s death.

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