Investigation ongoing in case of woman removed from hospital

Barbara Dawson, 57, went to a hospital in Tallahassee on Monday, to seek treatment for her breathing difficulties. She was arrested for refusing to leave a hospital. Mallory said an officer arrested Dawson for disorderly conduct and trespassing.

The type of blood clot revealed in the autopsy of a woman who died after being forcibly removed from a hospital is often “difficult to detect and can be impossible to treat”, hospital officials said Wednesday, while a lawyer representing the woman’s family insisted that both hospital staff and police were negligent. Instead, she is forcibly removed and put in cuffs… ‘The early facts of this case should cause a great concern for everyone’.

Ms. Dawson reportedly felt the need to remain at the hospital for continued care, which hospital staff declined.

“And then they’re going to try and take the handcuff off her”, said Angela Donar, Barbara Dawson’s aunt.

Relatives of Dawson told the paper that hospital staff couldn’t find a pulse on her after she collapsed and that they didn’t begin trying to revive her until they had wheeled her inside.

Blountstown police said they would continue an internal investigation and that they have requested an independent probe by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Some of those visits, too, had ended in conflict – Donar told the Democrat that staff at Calhoun Liberty had called the police on Dawson before, and once kicked her off the premises when she brought a friend in for treatment. Her family said she had a longstanding history of breathing problems.

Ruth Attaway, administrator and CEO of the hospital, told The Tallahassee Democrat that staff did everything they could to save Dawson.

The dashcam footage from the officer’s auto does not show what happened, but does pick up audio, Mallory said. He says the video will be released “in due time”. Donar said her niece didn’t leave the hospital because she was still in pain, even though she was deemed medically stable to leave. Once they were outside, Dawson collapsed, and the officers removed the handcuffs.

They say she had a pulse and was breathing at the time, but she died shortly after being taken into the hospital.

Since then, the Calhoun-Liberty County NAACP Chapter has become involved on behalf of Dawson’s family. “Because here we have an innocent person taken into custody and now they’ve lost their life when all they did was come and ask for medical help”.