Society Hospital let woman pull the plug on wrong man

Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to Sign Up today.
Sign up

RaginCajun

The Reigning Undisputed Monsters Tournament Champ
Oct 25, 2015
36,970
93,842
‘I killed somebody that I didn’t even know’: Hospital let woman pull the plug on wrong man, lawsuit claims

© Mary Altaffer/ Ambulances are seen parked at the entrance to the emergency room of St. Barnabas Hospital in July 2017 in the Bronx. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

She was told that her brother was dying, so Shirell Powell hurried to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx in July.

The prognosis was bad, Powell was told, she claims in a recently filed lawsuit. Her brother, Frederick Williams, was unconscious from an apparent drug overdose and had severe brain damage. Doctors didn’t think he was going to survive, she said she was told.

She sat by his bedside, looking at the 40-year-old man on life support, tubes obscuring his face, and cried. Soon, she called his family in Virginia, including two teenage daughters, she told the New York Post, and told them they needed to drive up to say their goodbyes. When it became clear two weeks later that he was not going to recover, the lawsuit says, Powell gave permission to St. Barnabas to withdraw life support from the man she thought was her brother.

Only there was one big problem, according to the lawsuit: He wasn’t.

Instead, the lawsuit claims, it was another 40-year-old man, named Freddy Clarence Williams.

Now, Powell is suing St. Barnabas Hospital and seeking unspecified damages after discovering that her brother is still alive and that she signed off on the death of a stranger, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Bronx Supreme Court this month and was first reported Sunday by the New York Post. The hospital had mixed up the two men with similar names, the suit claims, and the error was apparently not discovered until the city medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy. The two men looked enough alike, Powell told the Post, that she simply thought her brother’s face was swollen because of the brain damage.

“I nearly fainted because I killed somebody that I didn’t even know,” she told the newspaper. “I gave consent. I was like, ‘Where is my brother? What is going on?’ ”



A spokesman for the hospital could not immediately be reached to comment late Monday, but spokesman Steven Clark told the New York Post, “We don’t feel there is any merit to this claim.”

As it turns out, there was a reason nobody had heard from the living Frederick Williams: He’s in jail.

New York Department of Correction records show that Williams was arrested July 1, 2018, on a misdemeanor assault charge and had been held on Rikers Island, unbeknown to Powell or other family members.

Powell said she received the phone call from St. Barnabas about the man she was told was her brother on July 15. Frederick Williams had been a patient there before and, according to the lawsuit, hospital records still had Powell listed as an emergency contact. The man was transferred to the hospice unit two days later, when Williams’s family in Virginia came to say goodbye.

They sat in the hospital room crying, but for at least one family member, something didn’t seem right.

Powell’s sister “walked up into the room and said, ‘That is not my brother,’ ” Powell told the New York Post. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ "

After studying him for a while and noting the swelling, she eventually felt satisfied that it was him, despite the initial hesitation, Powell said. They removed him from life support on July 29, the lawsuit says.

But after Powell requested an autopsy a couple of weeks later, just as family members were planning Williams’s funeral, she received a startling phone call from the medical examiner’s office, the lawsuit claims: This man was a different Fred Williams. Freddy, he was called, according to the lawsuit. It was not her brother.

So she went looking for her brother — and eventually found him on Rikers Island. He is still there, with a court date scheduled for Thursday, court records show.

Frederick Williams told the New York Post during an interview at Rikers that he wasn’t mad at his sister for removing life support from a man she thought was him, understanding she thought that nothing else could be done.

“He was saying, ‘You were going to kill me?’ " she recalled to the New York paper about their exchange. "I explained to him, once you’re brain dead, there is nothing to do.”

Powell said she tried to obtain information about Freddy Williams from the medical examiner so she could send her condolences, but was denied.

“I barely sleep thinking about this all the time,” she said.
 

Jesus X

4 drink minimum.
Sep 7, 2015
28,766
31,291
lol it is kind of ghetto that they made a life or death decision over the phone at least facetime the lady or send a pic first of the guy to the phone.
 

Tuc Ouiner

Posting Machine
May 19, 2016
1,816
1,467
There was a death metal band named, "DEATH' believe it or not. They weren't exactly Slayer or Metallica, but they did have a hit called, "PULL THE PLUG!" Not the best song in the world, but it would go well with this column/thread or whatever yall call it.
 

Rambo John J

Eats things that would make a Billy Goat Puke
First 100
Jan 17, 2015
71,542
71,466

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
Not surprising that happened at the Barn. That is a hospital you literally don't visit even if you're dying.
 
1

1031

Guest
^^^ sometimes it's like that...with an audience. :(
 
Last edited by a moderator: