Working in health care has its rewards, but it’s fraught with drawbacks as well; seeing people in agony, seeing people die. Seeing people who don’t want to be in your care, people who are at their worst. A Naples woman who doesn’t remember going to the ER was one of the latter and she came close to paying a steep price.
A 58-year-old Naples woman faced up to three years in prison after she ended up at Boundary Community Hospital in a drunken stupor, became combative and bit and hit an emergency department technician.
The incident began at about 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, January 8, when dispatch received a report of an unconscious female, breathing but unresponsive, at home on Highway 95 near mile 495. She was transported to the hospital.
At about 7 p.m., a Bonners Ferry Police officer was dispatched to the hospital emergency room, where he was told by a receptionist that the woman, a “biter,” was “freaking out.” The officer could hear yelling as he approached the closed exam room, and on entering, he found the woman, on probation for DUI, in a wheelchair with several staff members struggling to hold her down as one tried to remove and IV port so she could be discharged.
The officer took one arm and a second who’d just arrived took the other, enabling removal of the port and dressing the patient.
Throughout the ordeal, the woman was thrashing, kicking, asking to be released, cursing and trying to bite anyone in range, including the officers.
At about 7:27 p.m., her ride home arrived and she was released.
During the melee, an officer learned that an emergency tech had been bit, and in an interview later the tech said she had been punched and bitten on her left arm while helping the woman stand after she came to. He saw swelling and redness where she’d been punched on the cheek, abrasions and scratches on her upper eye lid.
After interviewing other hospital staff and ascertaining the primary victim wanted to pursue charges, he forwarded the case to prosecuting attorney Andrakay Pluid recommending a felony charge of battery against a health care worker.
The officer went to her home January 11 and found a very different woman than the one he’d seen in the emergency room. When she answered the door, he asked her if she would step out and talk with him and did, asking. “am I in trouble?”
He told her he believed so and advised her of her Miranda rights. He asked her if she remembered hitting hospital employees and she said no.
She asked if she’d hurt anyone and he said she had.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” she said.
She remembered going into town that day for groceries, she said, and she bought a bottle of whisky. She went home, she said, had three drinks and doesn’t remember anything until the following morning. She didn’t, she said, remember going to the hospital.
Wearing an oxygen canula, she had diabetes and numerous other ailments. After conferring with Bonners Ferry Police Chief Willie Cowell and he with prosecutor Andrakay Pluid, the officer told the woman he wasn’t taking her in but to expect a summons.
The felony charge was filed January 16, and on April 29, she pled guilty in a plea agreement to misdemeanor battery and she was sentenced to 90 days in jail with 88 days suspended, $342.50 fine, $182.50 costs and two years supervised probation. In addition, she will be required to attend level one outpatient training.