PHILADELPHIA — A school counselor suffering an apparent heart attack died in a Philadelphia emergency room after waiting nearly 80 minutes for help – and a trio of homeless drug addicts nearby stole his watch instead of seeking aid, police said.
Joaquin Rivera, 63, died before seeing a triage nurse at Atria Health’s Frankford Campus over the weekend, police said.
Rivera, a musician and activist in the city’s Latino community, had spent more than 30 years working as a bilingual counselor at an inner-city high school.
“We’re all destroyed. A guy like that, for him to leave us the way that he did – and with what happened to him – everybody’s destroyed,” said Jesse Bermudez, a friend and fellow musician.
Rivera’s cruel end was captured on security videotape, much like the June 2008 death of Esmin Green, who died on a hospital floor as staffers at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn ignored her. Green’s family recently settled a lawsuit against the city for $2 million. (Source)
The sad thing about this story isn’t that he was robbed in the ER room. Its that he showed up at the ER with symptoms of having a heart attack and he has to wait 80 minutes. EIGHTY FUCKING MINUTES. Are you serious? He showed up “after pain started shooting down his right side”. Really? And you told him to have a seat? I know hospitals are busy but a man displaying signs of having a heart attack should be high up on the priority list. The fact that he was robbed in the ER, probably after he was dead, is sad but is just the climax of a really sad story. This is something Health Care Reform can’t fix. It just seems like common sense to me. But hey…what do I know?
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Wow. This is REALLY sad. And I agree, no matter what type of public option included reform our healthcare systme undergoes, all that will do is provide a broader range of people wtih ACCESS to healthcare….but if the people on the inside still aren’t doing their jobs, then it really, sadly, won’t make that much of a difference.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
The USA is a first world country – for some people. For everyone else it’s second or third-world and we’ve got Rush Limbaugh who supports ass-fuckery logic that justifies that position. If people want it that way, fine… but they cannot be allowed to say that we are the greatest country in the world. It’s like the idiot who thinks he’s the smartest man in the world, or the ugly dude who thinks he’s God’s gift to women. We need to REALLY look in the mirror and be honest with ourselves about where we actually fit in with the rest of the world.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
this disgusts me, not only were there drugged up fuckers in the e.r who stole a watch, especially if he was dead, but a person showing symptoms of a heart attack had to wait 80 fucking minutes FUCKIN really?