A woman who was told her brother wouldn’t “make it” after a drug overdose ordered a stranger be taken off life support in a mix-up at a Bronx hospital, a lawsuit alleges.
Shirell Powell thought her brother Frederick Williams had suffered brain damage from the overdose and that she was sitting by his side for over a week in July, according to the suit.
Powell then made the difficult decision to allow doctors to end life support for her “brother,” the suit says.
However, staff at St. Barnabas Hospital had confused the man for Powell’s brother when he was admitted, according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month.
“I nearly fainted because I killed somebody that I didn’t even know. I gave consent,” Powell told the New York Post in a story published Sunday first reporting the case.
In a statement to USA TODAY on Tuesday, St. Barnabas Hospital spokesperson Steve Clark said, “we don’t believe the lawsuit has any merit.”
According to the lawsuit, Freddy Clarence Williams was admitted to the hospital unconscious but with identification, including his social security card, on July 15 last year. The hospital admitted the man under a profile for Frederick Williams – Powell’s brother who had been a previous patient.
Powell said she got the call her brother had been admitted, so she rushed to the hospital.
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“He had tubes in his mouth, a neck brace,” the woman told the New York Post. “He was a little swollen … [But] he resembled my brother so much.” According to the suit, a doctor told Powell that day “that he did not think that Frederick Williams would ‘make
it.'”
After tests were run, Powell was told two days later that the man suffered brain damage from the drug overdose, according to the court filing.
For almost two weeks, the lawsuit alleges, Powell sat bedside with Williams, still believing the man was her brother. She told the Post she contacted family to come visit and that her sister did initially question whether the man was their brother.
“She walked up into the room and said, ‘That is not my brother,'” Powell told the newspaper. “I said, ‘What do you mean?'” Powell’s sister thought the man was bigger than their brother, but she eventually agreed his faced looked similar, just swollen.
“My sister, she walked up closer, and you could see the resemblance, and she was like, ‘Oh, OK,'” the woman told the Post.
Powell also contacted her teen nieces who lived in Virginia and believed their father was in his final days, she told the Post.
“She was hysterical,” Powell said of one of the girls who came up to New York before the family decided to withdraw life support. “She was holding his hand, kissing him, crying.”
The decision to OK the end of care came July 29, according to the lawsuit. “On July 29, 2018, Frederick Williams was pronounced deceased by defendant St. Barnabas Hospital,” the suit states.
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However, Powell requested an autopsy, and less than a month later, the medical examiner confirmed “the body to be that of Freddy Clarence Williams,” per the lawsuit.
Powell said she received the news as the family was planning a funeral. “She called us just in time,” she told the Post. “We would have been burying someone else.”
So where was Frederick Williams? According to New York court records, he had been arrested on July 1. Powell went to one of his court hearings weeks later, the Post reported.
In an interview with the Post at Rikers Island, Williams said he had forgiven his sister for the decision to end life support when she thought he was the man in the hospital.
“The doctors told her they couldn’t do anything,” he told the newspaper. “I’m not mad at her.” However, Williams was angry with the hospital, saying “How could the hospital do something like that? Look what they put my family through.”
According to the lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages: “As a result of the defendants misinformation and negligent conduct the plaintiff has suffered severe emotional harm and injuries.”
Powell said she’s thankful her brother is alive, but worries about the man who died. She told the Post she can’t get any information on him or his family due to privacy concerns.
“I barely sleep thinking about this all the time,” Powell told the newspaper. “To actually stand over him and watch this man take his last breath – sometimes I can’t even talk about it because I get upset and start crying.”