Woman Sues EMTs, Police for Letting Her Leave Ambulance and Jump Out Apartment Window

By Albert Samaha

On the morning of May 29, 2012, Maria Rodriguez entered a third-floor apartment and jumped out the window. She survived, but was seriously injured.

But, she claims, perhaps it all could have been prevented. Because before she went into the apartment building, Rodriguez had been sitting in an ambulance. Police officers and emergency medical technicians had placed her there after her violent outburst shattered a car's windows. And, according to a complaint filed last week in New York Supreme Court in the Bronx, Rodriguez thinks the emergency responders should be held accountable for her injuries from the jump.

She has filed suit against the city, the ambulance service, and the police officers for not properly supervising and restraining her. She argues that she was clearly mentally ill and should have been immobilized for her own protection.

The trouble began around 8 a.m., in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, a couple blocks south of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Rodriguez, according to the complaint, "was acting irrationally and disturbed and appeared to be mentally ill and had engaged in criminal mischief by breaking the windows of a 2001 Ford motor vehicle."

Read more at http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/07/mentally_ill_woman_suing_ambulance.php