Jul 8, 2008 7:31 pm US/Eastern
NYC To Face $25 Million Lawsuit Over KCH Neglect
Shock Surveillance Video Shows 49-Year-Old Collapse And Die After Being Left Unattended For Over An Hour
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Esmin Green's funeral was held Sunday. She died after being neglected by hospital staff in Brooklyn.
CBS
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Surveillance video footage from Kings County Hospital shows a woman dying on the floor of a psychiatric emergency room while security guards and staffers do nothing about it.
CBS
It was a shocking surveillance video shown around the world. A mother was left to die in a New York City hospital waiting room.
Now, as CBS 2 HD has learned her outraged family is taking action with a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the city.
On their way out of the city, back to their home in Jamaica, family members visited Kings County Hospital, where Esmin Green died. Earlier Tuesday, the woman's daughter and the sister said they will sue the city for $25 million. Tecia Harrison was grief stricken.
"The image of my mom fainting on the floor, and dying, ahh, ahh," said Harrison, 31.
Her mother, 49-year-old Green, is seen in the shocking video falling out of a chair, onto the psychiatric waiting room floor, and left there for more than an hour.
"We don't treat animals like that," sister Brenda James said. "We don't treat animals like that."
On June 19, Green waited to be seen more than 24 hours, during which time security guards came in to look at her, not once, but twice, and did nothing. And then, it's charged hospital records were altered to hide the facts.
The family says Green was killed twice, first by neglect.
"Secondly, killed by people who tried to cover us what happened," James said.
On Sunday, there was a funeral for Green, remembered in death, but ignored on the last day of her life. Family members who came up from Jamaica, who were asked if Green was neglected by the family, said they tried to stay in contact, even though Green did not have a phone of her own.
"When we didn't hear Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, we got worried, because we called her constantly," Harrison said.
Not only is the hospital being sued, but so are a number of its employees, six of whom have already been fired.
The Health and Hospitals Corporation president, Alan Aviles, issued a statement Tuesday evening:
"We failed Esmin Green and believe her family deserves fair and just compensation," Aviles said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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