FOXNews.com – Texas Hospital Security Guard Uses Stun Gun to Stop Father From Leaving With Newborn – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News — When you read the whole story it makes you wonder what is wrong with everyone involved.
In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn baby, sending both man and child crashing to the floor.
Now the man says the baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.
“I’ve got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby,” said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at the University of California-Berkeley. “It doesn’t take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall.”
The trouble began in April when Williams Lewis, 30, said he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman’s Hospital of Texas so they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.
found by Aric Mackey
An armed society is a polite society.
#1 Actually in my case that is true. I am much calmer and less quick to react to provocation when I have a weapon on my person.
I hope you weren’t suggesting the father return fire…
#1:
an armed society of morons is a shite society.
What you want to do give the dad a gun so he can shoot his way out next time?
And the elevators did not shut down when the baby’s leg RFID tag got to close? The guards can only react as they have been trained. What a poor security plan.
Walking out to the parking lot gives you time to say things like “Set the baby down we’re going to start beating you with sticks” and lets more help arrive. And before anyone says anything thing about parental rights; as long as the doctor and hospital are held responsible they have authority. They baby stays.
WTF??!!?
Um … hospitals aren’t prisons. If you want to leave and are mentally competent, you can leave. You may have to sign some papers that say that if you die, it’s not their fault. I signed such papers once and went to another hospital, at my own risk, of course.
I think both sides in this are morons. But, I have to give the king moran prize to the guy that tazed a guy carrying a baby. That’s beyond dumb. It’s more so, when you consider my first point hospitals aren’t prisons!!!!
As a side story to illustrate the point, consider this. My mother was in France for brain surgery. She had a halo screwed into her scull. They were not planning any procedures that day. Hospital staff suggested that she go into town and have a nice lunch. So, we did.
Imagine that happening here where you’re not even allowed to walk out of the hospital on your own two feet when being released for fear of law suits.
This is what you get when you don’t respect AUTHOR-IT-TAY! Welcome to Amerika!
The baby is just collateral damage.
#5 – me,
Dam does knot care weather the word is the wright word, only that it is a word. Obviously, I meant skull, not scull.
#8 – me,
OK, this is my first post trying to use href. Let’s try this again. I’m a geek, but not an HTML geek.
#5 – me,
Dam spelling chequer does knot care weather the word is the wright word, only that it is a word. Obviously, I meant skull, not scull.
God ram plucking pizza ship.
hahahahahahahahahahahah
here is where i might just cross over to the conservatives on the health care issue:
thank god we don’t have socialized medicine; just imagine what would happen were doctors and hospital staff civil servants as so many suggest as a good idea — father and baby would have been whisked away to a third world prison and water boarded, too!
#10 – grog,
Did you read my post #5?
I think the example of my mother in France shows exactly the opposite of your conclusion to be the case. Here, where it is business, a thug hired by a business person zapped someone for trying to leave the hospital before the hospital could run up further charges for which to bill the patient.
1. If he thought he was mistreated BEFORE he got tazed, wonder what he thought AFTER he got tazed?
2. Cops–when you are a hammer, everything else is a nail. In this vein, YES==I’d like to know if he was acting as a security guard pursuant to security protocols, or rather as a cop. Hard to think he was, but then Idon’t see arming Hospital folks with tasers–but this was Texas?
3–So, still not enough “facts” in this little scenario to know what it was that motivated the guy to leave, or what the wife was doing at the time?
4—Sure glad the little kiddie wasn’t aborted or hurt in the melee so it can grow up in this lovely family setting. Goes for the cop’s kiddies too.
The Hospital had no reasonable motive to prevent the family from leaving.
The security guard had no reasonable motive to prevent the family from leaving.
The father was not under arrest nor was there any reason to arrest him.
The father was not endangering the baby.
The father made no effort to injure or threaten the security guards.
Alright, so the security guard zapped him with a tazer, why wasn’t the guard charged with assault?
It’s a no brainer that the Hospital and security moran will pony up some big bucks. Quite possibly the Police Department too if they have retaliated further with bogus charges.
The AP story text is identical across all sources. This version has a link to the video. I think I’d need another camera angle though. Either way, these security guards are not stated as being actual cops anywhere. I’m thinking that maybe security guards aren’t even qualified to use tasers.
Either way though, it is not a crime to leave a hospital. The staff is supposed to present the patient with papers to sign to leave against doctor’s recommendations. They’re not supposed to prevent escapes. These are patients not criminals. No one has claimed that they were not the legitimate parents of the infant. Despite all indications that the child should not be raised by the parents, the article seems to be stating that that conclusion was reached only after this incident, not before, even though it may be the right decision.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5053552.html
I’m thinking that hospital security needs to be instructed that they are not prison guards.
13—“The Hospital had no reasonable motive to prevent the family from leaving.”
You have to “assume” alot to get to that conclusion. The wife was in her nightgown and the couple had been arguing (from memory?). The kid had the rfid tag that had not been removed. Absent the time to collect the facts, allowing the kid to leave the premises could be negligent.
So, on the fact stated in the article, it could go either way. Cop or security plan sounds faulty and “force” oriented rather than resolution oriented. The guy could well have been unauthorized to even be holding the kid. Primary Hospital responsibility was the protection of the kid, they failed that if the kid was injured, which actually doesn’t sound like he was, until maybe taken home and dropped a few times to “make the case?” But I precede myself.
Security cops in RETAIL business….
HAVE little or NO rights…
They can TRY to detain you….But they CANT harm you, PERIOD.
You can fight, and try to get away, ALL they are SUPPOSED to do, is DETAIN, OR let you go…
the ONLY reason to use a weapon, EVEN if the store is BEING robbed, is NEVER…
IF you are harming OTHERS, they can go OFF DUTY(and NOT BE COVERED by insurance or Liability), and BEAT the living hell out of you. BUT as long as they are ON THE CLOCK, or in UNIFORM…They are NOT to harm you.
This dont MEAN you DONT fall and hurt yourself on the cement, or a WALL… Or maybe TRIP, along the way…
Lesson Learned: Next time pay your bill before trying to leave the hospital.
You are a security guard at a hospital.
Elevators stop working because someone has tried to remove an infant from the hospital.
You arrive at the floor and find some jackass holding a baby. He says its his baby and he is going to leave.
Do you let him leave?
oh, but for the record — i can understand the father’s frustration, but he needs to learn some self-control, but that cop should be fired form the force and have his carry permit taken away
when my son was born, he had to stay at the hospital for a week, and i could not believe how callous and insensitive and apparently unprepared to handle the needs of a baby injured during childbirth the hospital staff were, but the bands on the baby’s ankle are there for a reason — so people can’t steal your baby, and i was glad my baby had one on
you other fathers remember the first baby — it’s scary and you’re sleep deprived and if your wife and/or baby seem mistreated, you get enraged pretty quickly
Well, it’s clear that nothing is clear about this guy, his relationship with his wife, his motivation for leaving with the baby, or anything else related to the event.
But one thing is clear beyond any reasonable doubt. It is clear that you have to be a world class idiot to shoot a man holding a baby with a taser.
Due to a stroke of good luck and bad aim, this turned out much better than it might have. Following a misprint of the protocols in his “Official Security Guard Manual,” the guard was trying to taze the infant, not the father.
Fortunately, he missed.
#21 – (me) But one thing is clear beyond any reasonable doubt. It is clear that you have to be a world class idiot to shoot a man holding a baby with a taser.
Although it isn’t clear if the guard shot the man with a taser, or if it was the baby that was holding a taser. I suppose the mechanics of that sentence could have been worked on a little more. 🙂
#23 – OFTLO,
I think the baby was holding the taser and shot the parent in an attempt to make a getaway. At least that explanation makes more sense than the reality.
Actually, the couple has a history of abuse. The father was trying to sneak out of the hospital with the baby because he knew the department of social services had custody. One can argue the wisdom of using a taser in the situation, but let’s not put bad parents on a pedestal. If they had escaped with the baby, the outcome could have been much worse.
The parents were idiots and so were the security guards. Just another day in the good old USA.
Maybe the baby girl was showing signs of intelligence so the guard did what any good ole wholesome christian would do when women show any sign of intelligence.
#25, podesta,
Maybe you could enlighten us where you got that information. It certainly wasn’t in the article and the Child Protective Services would not be able to release that information even if it was true. If CPS had custody of the baby, then the parents would not have been allowed to hold the baby. Since that was not mentioned in the story, I seriously doubt if it is true.
Making stuff up again?
People in Texas are morons. This sort of thing is just good fun to them.
Mr. Fool, I got the information from a local broadcast news report and an article in the WaPo. Unlike you, I actually gather information instead of going off on a tangent with no basis for doing so. The fact you lack the intelligence to do even basic research does not mean I must operate by such low standards.
Those interested in the rest of the story can read it here:
http://tinyurl.com/2wkfe3
Considering that social services has had custody of the baby since April, the parents have a significant violence problem. The father apparently thinks he will be able to score some money in a lawsuit by claiming injury to a child he isn’t considered fit to parent. Unlikely.
#28, #30,
Perhaps I’m too literal minded when reading stuff. The article states that CPS has custody of the child. It is not clear from the article whether CPS already had custody prior to this or took custody because of this.