Human Rights Groups Sponsor Vigil to Mourn Shocking Emergency Room Death

To demand an end to the appalling human rights violations that resulted in the death of Esmin Green, a coalition of human rights activists and community members is holding a demonstration on Friday, July 25, beginning at 5 p.m. (with a candlelight vigil at 8:30 p.m.) at Kings County Hospital Center, Psychiatric Emergency Room, Building G, 606 Winthrop Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. Green, who had been involuntarily committed, collapsed in Kings County Hospital Center’s psychiatric emergency room on June 19 after having waited for nearly 24 hours for a bed to become available. She lay sprawled on the floor for more than an hour before the medical staff took any notice of her – and that notice consisted of someone’s standing over her and prodding her body with a foot, according to The New York Times. By then, it was too late: Green had died. According to the Associated Press, Green, a mother of six, sat waiting for a bed to become available for nearly 24 hours before she collapsed onto the floor. Further, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, facility staff possibly falsified documents, stating that Green was “up and about, went to the bathroom” and was “sitting quietly in the waiting room” although videotapes confirmed that she had not moved from her position on the waiting room floor.

Sources: http://www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/nyregion/12about.html