Mom Says Son Sent Home From Hospital Dead In Taxi: Dying While Black
Credit: Flickr
December 19, 2013

H/T Nonny

A North Carolina mother says that security guards at a local hospital of forcibly removed her son from the hospital for being "uncooperative," even though he was either dying or already dead.

I'm sure some are wondering, and yes, A'Darrin was black.

A lawsuit filed by Deborah Washington says her son A'Darrin Washington suffered from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and had been a patient at Cumberland County Hospital for ten years leading up to the November 2011 incident.

Due to his illness, A'Darrin suffered frequent bouts of pneumonia, for which he was regularly hospitalized.

He was last admitted to the hospital on Nov. 14th for what doctors at first thought was bacterial pneumonia.

Days later, test results revealed he was actually suffering from a form of fungal pneumonia.

After receiving multiple doses of the wrong medication, A'Darrin's condition worsened. Yet on Nov. 21, the same day he had finally received a dose of the correct medicine, doctors deemed him stable enough for discharge.

According to A'Darrin's mother, her son was still too ill to leave, but hospital staff insisted.

The hospital staff was so determine to discharge A'Darrin that the following morning, a nurse called for security to escort A'Darrin out for being "uncooperative" and "refusing to talk or move."

But A'Darrin's mother says he was being "unresponsive" because he was dying and had lost the ability to function.

Security guards from AlliedBarton Security Services hauled him out to the street regardless, according to the lawsuit filed by Washington against the security company.

Two hospital staff members "expressed concern" for A'Darrin, but the guards proceeded to load his body into a taxi and even crossed his legs for him.

Washington says that the taxi driver believed A'Darrin may already have been dead, but still drove him the 45 minutes it took to get him back home.

Her son's body was left in the taxi in the front yard of his home for four hours, while police investigated as A'Darrin arrived "unresponsive and cold to the touch," his mother says. He was officially pronounced dead a short time later.

According to the report from Courthouse News Service, Washington is seeking compensatory and punitive damages "for negligence, wrongful death and negligent infliction of emotional distress."

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