A Florida woman who collapsed and later died after being arrested for refusing to leave a rural hospital emergency room may have lived if medical staffers and police had not assumed she was faking illness, her lawyers said on Wednesday.
Barbara Dawson, 57, complained of abdominal pains at Calhoun Liberty Hospital in the Florida Panhandle town of Blountsville five days before Christmas, but medical staffers examined and released her.
When she refused to leave, the hospital called the police, who handcuffed her and took her outside, where she collapsed in the hospital driveway. Dawson was returned to the hospital but died of a blood clot in her lungs the next day.