Tag: Georgia
Video shows nurses laughing as dying 89-year-old WWII veteran calls for help, gasps for air
Hidden camera footage recently made public revealed a decorated World War II veteran died after fighting for air while a pair of nurses laughed in front of him.
James Dempsey on Feb. 27, 2014, repeatedly called out to staff members at Northeast Atlanta Health and Rehabilitation before he fell unconscious, gasping for air all the while.
Nursing home staff found him unresponsive just before 5:30 a.m. and it took them nearly an hour to call 911, according to state records obtained by WXIA.
Dempsey’s family, who sued the facility in 2014, declined to comment, citing a settlement with the nursing home.
Former nursing supervisor Wanda Nuckles testified during the trial that she rushed to the 89-year-old veteran’s room when she learned he’d stopped breathing and performed chest compressions until help arrived.
Nuckles did not know she’d been filmed at the time and the clip directly contradicts her account, which she said was just “an honest mistake.”
Instead, the footage shows nursing staff repeatedly start and stop Dempsey’s chest compressions. When the responding nurses struggled to get Dempsey’s oxygen machine to start, Nuckles can be heard laughing with them in the background.
“Ma’am was there something funny at the time?” Mike Prieto, the attorney for Dempsey’s family, questioned.
She responded: “I can’t even remember all that, as you can see.”
Retired nursing professor Elaine Harris identified several violations, including failure to respond, failure to assess and failure to act.
“In 43 years of nursing, I have never seen such disregard for human life in a health care setting,” she told the news station.
Attorneys representing the Atlanta nursing home attempted to block WXIA from releasing the footage, but in the end dropped its appeal with the Georgia State Supreme Court.
Both Nuckles and another nurse were fired, but not until nearly a year after the incident. And they only just turned in their licenses in September — nearly three years after Dempsey’s death.
A spokesperson for the Georgia Board of Nursing could not confirm when the state became aware of the video, but the board’s action did come on the heels of receiving a link to the video.
A spokesperson for the nursing home, owned by Sava Senior Care, in a statement wrote they were “saddened by the events which occurred three years ago” before going on to note it has “new leadership and the leadership team and the staff have worked very diligently to improve quality care and the quality of life for our residents.”
Fight over Bible verse on forgiveness leaves student dead
A Georgia college student was fatally shot in a fight with a pal over a Bible verse on forgiveness, police said.
Jacquell Smith, 20, was gunned down Sunday after reportedly feuding with his friend Raekwon Pauldo over scripture at a Dublin home, news station WMAZ reported.
Police said that the argument started with the verse but “then that turned to something else.”
“Apparently two friends got into an argument,” Dublin police Chief Tim Chatman told WMAZ. “These are friends. They’ve been knowing each other for a long time. They were arguing over stuff that didn’t make any sense.”
The argument escalated when Pauldo allegedly shot his friend twice in the head, police said.
Smith was rushed to Fairview Park Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Pauldo, 21, was later arrested on murder charges.
Friends created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Smith’s funeral service.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/31/fight-over-bible-verse-on-forgiveness-leaves-student-dead/
White student tells Black student ‘You are my slave’ in school’s ‘Civil War Day’ has mom furious
KENNESAW, Ga. — A new battle line has formed in the national debate over Civil War flags and symbols — this time at a Georgia school not far from a mountaintop where Confederate soldiers fired their cannons at Union troops more than a century ago.
The school near Kennesaw Mountain last month invited fifth-graders to dress up as characters from the Civil War.
A white student, dressed as a plantation owner, said to a 10-year-old black classmate, “You are my slave,” said the black child’s parent, Corrie Davis.
“What I want them to understand is the pain it caused my son,” Davis said of her child, who did not dress up that day. “This is bringing them back to a time when people were murdered, when people died, when people owned people.”
Davis recorded an emotional video in which she explains how she was affected by what happened to her son. It has attracted about 70,000 views on Facebook. The distraught mother said she met with school officials, but was dismayed when they refused to promise that they would never conduct a class in that way again. The issue could come to a head in a couple of weeks, when Davis plans to bring it up at a regularly scheduled school board meeting.
“No student was required to dress in period attire and any student that did so was not instructed, nor required, to dress in any specific attire,” school system spokesman John Stafford said in a brief statement. Cobb County school officials haven’t said whether the annual Civil War Day will continue next year at Big Shanty Intermediate School.
However, the note sent home to parents before the event said “it creates a more realistic simulation when dressing in Civil War clothing.”
Its suggestions included overalls — which Davis believes could have been meant to represent the clothing worn by slaves — and dark pants and white button-down shirts. White button-down shirts have become synonymous with demonstrators protesting the removal of Confederate statues in recent months. They were worn, for example, by some of the white nationalists who staged a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to violent clashes in August.
Communities around the country have removed Confederate monuments under pressure from those who say they honor a regime that enslaved African-Americans. The debate over such symbols intensified after a self-proclaimed white supremacist who had posed in a photo with the Confederate battle flag fatally shot nine black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. And it has shown little signs of waning since the Charlottesville clashes that left one woman dead.
“BE CREATIVE and use your resources to ensure that your costume is as accurate as possible,” the Georgia school’s note informed parents. It included a small picture of a man in Civil War dress with what appears to be one of several flags used by the Confederate States of America.
“If they’re requiring that the costume be as accurate as possible … some kid is going to come to school dressed as a plantation owner,” Davis said in her video. “My son is going to be looked upon as a slave at the school.”
The best way to help students learn about difficult historical events such as the Civil War is to create an environment in which they can talk about them and learn different perspectives, said Andy Mink, a former Virginia teacher and now vice president of education programs at the National Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen teaching.
“I think the best reason to teach history is to teach empathy,” said Mink, who works with schools nationwide on teaching strategies.
“The question we have to ask is whether or not dressing in a particular outfit is really achieving a learning outcome of some kind.”
Davis said she doesn’t object to learning about the Civil War. “I’m simply saying the way in which you are going about teaching this standard is offensive,” she said.
Earlier this month, students in Georgia’s largest school system, Gwinnett County, were asked in a class studying the rise of Nazism to come up with ideas for mascots that might have been used as propaganda for the Nazi party. Gwinnett County schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach said it wasn’t appropriate, and that the matter was being addressed with the teacher.
“We don’t want to do things in our classrooms that would intentionally provide traumatic experiences for young people,” said Sandra Schmidt, associate professor of social studies education at Teachers College at Columbia University.
Schmidt said educators have been aware of the possible pitfalls of student role-playing exercises since the late 1960s’ “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes” experiment, in which Iowa teacher Jane Elliott designated blue-eyed students as superior to brown-eyed peers.
“She quickly realized how out of hand it got,” Schmidt said.
Davis said she won’t back down in her effort to stop the dress-up aspect of the school’s Civil War Day. She said she doesn’t want other students going through what her son did.
“What they can do is say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore,’” Davis said. “It is mind-boggling to me that no one will say that.”
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/13/you-are-my-slave-elementary-school-civil-war-day-has-mom-furious/
Georgia Teen Murderer Arrested In Staten Island
A Georgia teen on the run for a double murder has been found and arrested. 17 year old Akilee Zakee Wilson will be extradited back to Georgia after cops found him in a housing complex on Staten Island.
Cops say Wilson was involved in a shooting between two rival groups in Canton, Georgia. When the dust settled, one man was found dead, another injured and one who was wounded but died enroute to the hospital.
Police charged three other men, one of them being the brother of one of the victims, with murder, and a fourth one with obstruction of an officer, in connection with the shooting back in July.
It’s amazing how a lot of young people are throwing their lives away over something that was probably petty more than likely.
Link to article here:
Georgia Teen Charged With Murder
Man headed to jail for murder over Hot Pockets
Hot Pockets can get people heated.
An Atlanta man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for a fatal shooting following a fight over the snack, according to news station WAGA.
Prosecutors said Nathaniel Mathis had asked his sister and her boyfriend, Rodney Benton, 34, to get pepperoni Hot Pockets last July using his card.
When the couple got to the store, the Hot Pockets were sold out so his sister called Mathis to let him know.
They tried to buy other food, but Mathis’ card was rejected. She called him back and an argument reportedly ensued.
The couple ended up going home empty-handed, where they were met by a furious Mathis.
“The defendant was home and still upset when he approached the SUV,” the Fulton County District Attorney’s office said.
Prosecutors said that Mathis went up to the passenger side and yelled “you know what’s going on” and shot Benton eight times.
He then fled for a nearby park where he approached a woman with a message for his sister, news station WXIA reported.
The woman told police he said, “I just snapped. I love her and didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
Authorities were able to track down Mathis in the woods, where he was shirtless and pointing a gun to his head. After two hours of negotiations, police shot him with a beanbag gun and took him into custody.
Mathis was found guilty of murder, possession of a firearm by a first offender probationer and criminal damage to property. He was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison plus ten years.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/05/17/man-headed-to-jail-for-murder-over-hot-pockets-i-just-snapped/
Naked woman preaches to and attacks customers at Waffle House
COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Police say a Georgia woman who was first walking around a Waffle House preaching to customers, allegedly punched a woman, took off her clothes and attacked those in the restaurant.
Witnesses say Jennifer Nicholson arrived at the Waffle House in Kennesaw, Ga., with a man on Jan. 8. He left, leaving her alone in the restaurant.
According to a police report, a witness said Nicholson, of Marietta, Ga., began to walk around the restaurant preaching to customers. The witness said Nicholson followed her outside and back inside the restaurant. When the woman told Nicholson to leave her alone, she said Nicholson punched her in the nose, chest and twice on her arm. Nicholson then allegedly threw a plate at the woman, missing her and striking a window.
Another witness told police that Nicholson stopped him when he tried to leave the restaurant by wrapping her arms around him “like a bear hug.” The man said he pushed Nicholson away so he could leave.