Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Not So Great Escape

Being the county hospital, we see all of the jail patients. The patient in this story was an illegal immigrant male from Mexico. Like all jail patients, his hands and feet were cuffed. During his stay he needed to use the bathroom. The standard procedure is that the officers walk the inmate to the bathroom and stand outside. They are not uncuffed.

After ten minutes of this patient in the bathroom...we started asking questions. Was he OK? We have had many patients vagal or even code in the bathroom. So we asked the officers to check on him. They knocked on the door.....no response.

About the same time, we started hearing a noise across the ER...about 40 yards from the bathroom. It hit us all about the same time....then.... CRASH!!! The crafty jailbird came flying down. You have to give him props. With his hands and his feet cuffed...this guy stood on the toilet, made a hole in the bathroom ceiling, climbed through it, and almost escaped! Below are the pictures. The first is the bathroom. The second is the ceiling he fell through.

I knew they were good swimmers....but didn't know about the climbing skills!! (I'm Hispanic myself so I can say that.)

-ER Doc


14 comments:

Mary said...

That is awesome!

Dani said...

Wow! Pretty Crazy!

Unknown said...

I knew we were good climbers, but my little brother and I climbed all over everything. (He still does as a climbing instructor.)

The photos bring to mind the stories in the Things I Learn From My Patients thread at StudentDoctorNet... at least one involved a patient stuck in the ceiling with their bare bottom on display, although the thread lacks illustrations.

(Fair warning: there's fifty-some-odd pages of that thread.)

Chrysalis said...

If only they put that determination and ingenuity to good use.

CiCi said...

When someone wants to get away they can figure how to do it. Sounds like the only reason he didn't get out of there was the ceiling gave.

MLee said...

LMAO.... wish we could draw a map and escape plan for some of our ER pych patients on how to get out

one__speed said...

WE HAD THE SAME THING HAPPEN IN OUR ER, A PSYCH PATIENT CLIMBS THROUGH THE LIGHT FIXUTURE INTO THE CRAWL SPACE IN THE CIELING. HE'S WALKING AROUND UP THERE FOR ABOUT 20 MINUTES BEFORE HE CAME BACK DOWN ON HIS OWN. NUTS I TELLS YA.

StorytellERdoc said...

Frickin' hysterical. If that doesn't bring alive an ER, I don't know what would. I hope he enjoys more jail time now...

Anonymous said...

Baha. Same thing happened in our ER as well a few years ago. The guy actually DID escape and the whole hospital was put on lock down.

Bubba said...

When I was doing my fellowship at another county hospital, one of the residents was stabbed with a makeshift knife by an inmate because he (resident) won't help him escape.

I wouldn't be surprised if later a lawsuit alleging "faulty ceiling" is brought against the hospital by this inmate, especially if he got hurt from the fall. Oh! don't worry he'll find a lawyer to take his case.

Weird world we live in.

SeaSpray said...

Funny! I wonder how he cut the ceiling? Must be pretty strong too.

ERP said...

I wish that would happen at my hospital so I could blog about it.

Anonymous said...

Just a thought, since I guess working in a hospital does not mean you are good are geography or basic knowledge of other cultures, how does one get from Mexico to the US...? Hmmm, swimming or climbing a fence? I wonder...

Methinks my friend you mean Cubans are good swimmers... kind of a big difference... just saying.

Anonymous said...

Two words... Rio Grande.