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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Mt. Lebanon woman sues after police detain her during epileptic seizure When Jessica Yochum had an epileptic seizure at work in February, her co-workers at Houlihan's at the Galleria knew what was happening. They called 911 and told dispatchers the young woman was seizing. But when emergency responders from the Medical Rescue Team South Authority ambulance service and Mt. Lebanon police arrived, they did not follow what are considered by experts to be standard protocols for such an event. They handcuffed Ms. Yochum, 23, shackled her and restrained her head. All that, her attorney said, exacerbated the seizure. By the time they got her to St. Clair Hospital, she had inadvertently bitten one of the ambulance workers, and the police were accusing her of being on cocaine. They charged her with aggravated assault for the bite -- even after they learned from Ms. Yochum's doctor that the girl had epilepsy and was not taking any illegal drugs. The case was ultimately dismissed by a magisterial district judge, but Ms. Yochum filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the parties involved, alleging a number of counts, including violations of her due process rights, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act. Neither officials at MRTSA nor the police department had seen the lawsuit Thursday and said they could not comment. The individual defendants named are emergency responders Gregory Petro and Richard Weisner, as well as Officer Jeffrey Frolo. Ms. Yochum, a recent graduate of Penn State University who hopes to go to graduate school and become a speech pathologist, had her first seizure in 2008 while studying in Spain. The second seizure came while she was driving across the Hot Metal Bridge. That time, she said, Pittsburgh police and paramedics were wonderful with her. They left her inside her vehicle until the seizure had ended, and waited with her until she had recovered. The seizure at Houlihan's was only her third. Ms. Yochum doesn't remember anything about it -- only the things leading up to the seizure. She got intense nausea, a feeling of deja vu and thought that she was about to fall over. The rest of what happened has been pieced together for Ms. Yochum by what her coworkers saw -- and later what her parents saw at the hospital. When the emergency responders got to Houlihan's, she said, "They started to restrain me and said I wasn't having a seizure, I was having a drug overdose. "The more you restrain someone, the worse it gets." Timothy P. O'Brien, the attorney representing Ms. Yochum, said standard protocol is to leave a seizing person alone -- provided they are not in danger of harming themselves or others. "The last thing you want to do is apply force," he said. "It is well-known a person in a seizure will respond aggressively to that kind of treatment." Dr. Alan Ettinger, an epilepsy expert practicing in New York, agreed. Further, he said, the aggressive actions of a seizing patient aren't volitional. "In a confused state, a person may lash our or bite," he said. "It's not malicious." In pictures taken shortly after the incident, large bruises can be seen on Ms. Yochum's legs and arms, along with cuts from the handcuffs and shackles. Ms. Yochum and her parents -- beyond the treatment that day -- are most angry by the behavior of the police department afterward. Officers refused to drop the aggravated assault charge, and the day after the seizure threatened in a phone call to show up at Ms. Yochum's home to arrest her if she didn't arrive at their department within 30 minutes to provide fingerprints. "It made us angry at first that the professionals didn't help her the way they should have," said Alice Yochum, Jessica's mother. "The more we thought about it, it created another worry: What if it happens again?" "There were 14 different times in this thing that they had a chance to stop what they were doing and apologize," said Michael Yochum, Jessica's father. Now, the family is pursuing the lawsuit to ensure that other people are not subjected to a similar experience. "I think it's a bigger issue than me," Ms. Yochum said. Indeed, according to Dr. Ettinger, one in 10 people in the United States will have at least one seizure over a lifetime, and the prevalence rate for epilepsy with recurrent seizures is 1 percent of the population. Even so, what happened to Ms. Yochum is not uncommon. The Epilepsy Foundation of America has, for years, been working on a program to educate police and emergency medical workers about seizures. "First responders really need to be very aware of the possibility [of a seizure] and not immediately assume the person must be on alcohol or drugs," Dr. Ettinger said.
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#5. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
Put your shoe under their head and do nothing else.
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