Slashdot Mirror
Rings From Woman's Amputated Arm Go Missing
After suffering horrific injuries in a car accident, 65-year-old Doris Smith had to have her left arm amputated. As if that weren't bad enough, three rings she was wearing on her left hand have now gone missing. Police, ambulance, and hospital staff are investigating the incident, but so far nobody has found a trace of the missing jewelry. Mrs. Smith's son said, "You'd like to think nobody would have stolen them with the state my mum was in. It's not so much the financial value of them — it's the sentimental value."
how is that news for nerds, stuff that matters?
get his wallet!
Wait, this is an old joke, isn't it? "There was this Yuppie who had a terrible accident. The police found him lying on the side of the road, crying "My Mercedes! My Mercedes!" The police pointed out, "Man, why are you moaning about your car, it looks like your left arm has been torn off!" Immediately, the man started yelling "My Rolex! My Rolex!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The story itself might not seem particularly geek/news/thought-worthy until you start thinking about it.
Hospital Procedure:
What procedures are there to protect property in hospitals? Having worked in an ER, it was often "get a hospital volunteer to put clothes in a brown paper bag and write illegibly what is in there". Surely we could find better and more secure ways of doing this. We're talking about property, wallets, rings etc of a person who may be unconscious and is definitely vulnerable. Can't we do better than a brown bag?
Property Rights:
This goes to questions over tissue rights over removed organs (always a confusing area of law), who is responsible for the property of an unconscious person, and who is responsible for property attached to removed tissue (or a removed arm for that matter).
I'd say it's sufficiently geeky, if you think about it.
They should let any pawn shops in the area know to keep an eye out for them and watch Craigslist and EBay. A lot to monitor but no way around it.
This is clearly unacceptable. No hospital should stand for any of their employees stealing the property of an injured person. Because, let's face it, it's in the Hospital's best interest to make sure they've got the rings so they can pawn them to pay off the hospital bills.
In other words, no amateur thieves taking what the Hospital is planning to steal later!
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Doctors, typically non-caucasian, have frequently been caught stealing valuable jewelry in emergency rooms.
Sometimes they KILL people if the watch is a high end Rolex : murder charges on Dr Cleveland James Enmon ...
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/09/lawsuit_alleges_er_doctor_let.php
That doctor passively killed Jerry Keith Kubena and nurses saw him steal the watch from him. http://www.tributes.com/show/Jerry-Kubena-86051486/
Certain people with diverse ethnic backgrounds seem to not only fill prisons far more than other ethnic groups, they also have been caught stealing in the ER rooms.
Even doctors.
As to why they don't get fired, such as Cleveland James Enmon, and others, is because sometimes its hard to fire "certain kinds" of people.