Choking to death on a cheese sandwich

Stitches keeps bringing this up in attacks on eAdvocate’s blog, which repeats stuff that was in the news, so I thought it was time I’d address this idiotic comment on AZU’s blog.

As usual, AZU doesn’t tell the whole story. Below is the article in question.

AP, “DELAWARE: Ailing sex offender chokes to death at clinic.” Delmarva Now! The Daily Times; Feb. 25, 2008.

http://on-murders.blogspot.com/2008/02/de-ailing-sex-offender-chokes-to-death.html

DELAWARE: Ailing sex offender chokes to death at clinic

Associated Press

DOVER — A 22-year-old Huntington's disease victim who was denied a bed in a state health care facility because he was a registered sex offender choked to death Monday at a Dover mental health clinic. Family members said they were told that Joseph Heverin, 22, whose muscle control had deteriorated to the point where he often fell and had to be put in a wheelchair, choked to death on a sandwich at Dover Behavioral Health Systems. "He was dead when he got to the hospital," said Heverin's brother, Paul Vrem.

Vrem said he learned of his brother's death after driving to Dover Behavioral to pick him up for a dental appointment. "They told me that he had choked on a grilled cheese sandwich and that they were administering CPR," Vrem said. DBHS chief operating officer William Weaver and other clinic officials did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.

Colin Faulkner, director of public safety for Kent County, said paramedics were dispatched to Dover Behavioral Health shortly before 12:30 p.m. in response to a report of a person choking. "It would appear that he went into cardiac arrest, full arrest, as the result of an unresolved choking incident," Faulkner said. Jay Lynch, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Social Services, confirmed Heverin's death.

Heverin's mother, Dianne Vrem, said Dover Behavioral officials kept family members in a waiting room until Heverin had been taken away by ambulance, and that Kent General officials also refused her request to be with her son. "I just wanted to hold him and let him know that his mom was there," she said.

A spokeswoman for Kent General did not immediately return a telephone message Monday afternoon. Last week, Heverin was the subject of an Associated Press article describing the bureaucratic limbo in which his criminal past and his disease — an incurable, degenerative neurological disorder that also killed his father and other family members — had left him.

Officials at Dover Behavioral, a short-stay psychiatric facility where Heverin had been admitted last summer for treatment of depression, had sought and received court permission to discharge him, arguing that he is not mentally ill. He remained at the facility as his guardianship case worked its way through the court system.

Even though a court declared Heverin "a disabled person" who was "unable to act in his own best interest," health and social service officials refused to place him in state-run long-term care facility. They argued that he was neither developmentally disabled nor mentally ill. The primary reason for their opposition, however, was that Heverin was a registered sex offender. He had twice been convicted of unlawful sexual contact, incidents that his supporters believe stemmed from the effects of Huntington's disease, a hereditary disorder that has been linked with inappropriate sexual behavior.

Dover Behavioral officials said they had tried repeatedly for more than a year to find placement options for Heverin, but no facility was willing to take him. Kristopher Starr, an attorney appointed as a fact-finder in Heverin's guardianship case, submitted a report earlier this month excoriating state officials for refusing to place Heverin in a skilled nursing facility, at least not until he is "bedridden." "They finally got what they wanted; they won't have to deal with the problem anymore," Paul Vrem said Monday.

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It was more than an act of a “sex offender choking on a grilled cheese sandwich.” The reality is far more sinister. I guess we can count out knowledge of basic body functions as a requirement of AZU membership. The fact is the man had a degenerative condition that made him struggle to maintain control of his body, in particular, muscle functions. By the way, when we eat, we use our muscles to swallow and pull it through the esophagus and into the stomach. It wasn’t your average case, it was a case of gross negligence on the part of the system left to care for a terminally ill man, a man denied services simply because of his status as a registrant, a man who was having trouble with muscular functions, which obviously includes eating; a grilled cheese sandwich would not be an appropriate meal in this case. American jurisprudence considers negligent death murder, and if the victim was not a sex offender, the family would have won a wrongful death lawsuit easily.

ADDENDUM

This comment from an anonymous poster helps the reader unerstand the "grilled cheese choking death" story posted at eAdvocate's blog, written into one long sentence, which will no doubt further confuse and aggravate the intellectually challenged AZU troll:

If certain people would learn to read (i.e., the tags at the end of a case) then they would know how a case is broken down; As to the cheese sandwich case, he was forced into a facility which could not handle his medical conditions because the proper facilities would not accept him due to his SO status; That case is flagged: "Substantially caused by a SO Law, not by vigilantes;" Her construction is actually a misconstruction due to her failure to read what is posted.