An unidentified man in the Citrus Heights area, a suburb east of Sacramento, CA, is being heralded as a “Good Samaritan” by Michael and Joanne Golden, a couple who lives in the area.
He earned the title one Sunday afternoon this January when he saved Joanne and attempted to save her dog, Cody, from a vicious and unidentified pit bull.
“I don’t know what would have happened,” Michael Golden said. “We want to thank him and have him help us positively identify the dog.”
Seven year old Alexis Goggins is soft spoken and shy. One might not expect the young girl with a learning disability to be very courageous, much less a hero, but that is exactly what she is.
In Detroit, Michigan, a far cry from Sacramento, Alexis and her mother, Seliethia Parker, were taken hostage by Parker’s ex-boyfriend in their home town. Calvin Tillie, the ex-boyfriend, jumped into a car containing Alexis, Parker and a friend and forced the friend to drive at gun point. The friend pulled into a gas station and, leaving the car under the premise of needing gas, called 911. Inside the car, the drama unfolded. The Associated Press reports:
…Parker pleaded with the gunman not to shoot. As he was about to open fire, Alexis cried, “Don’t hurt my mother!” and jumped into her mother’s arms from the back seat.
Don’t let your pessimistic friends fool you! There are still good people out there. Case in point: Dava Tennet. On the afternoon of February 4, 2008, in Folsom, CA, a suburb outside Sacramento, Tennet pulled an injured man out of his burning car and then called for police assistance.
“I saw the car crash and couldn’t believe it,” Tennant, 29, said. “It was like auto-pilot – I hopped out of the car to make sure everybody was OK.”
Joy Snider had been waiting on a red light at the intersection of Russi Road and Blue Ravine when she was struck from behind by Douglas Burns, who, allegedly, was driving drunk. Burns’ sports car became wedged underneath Snider’s truck and caught fire. Tennet, a witness to the accident, rushed over and pulled Burns from his vehicle. In her interview with the Folsom Telegraph, Tennet described Burns as resistant at first to her attempts to pull him from his vehicle but eventually gave in as he had little control over his body.
Injuries associated with amusement park rides always leave me a bit uneasy, and I find I am reminded of them any time our State Fair comes to our Sacramento home or when my family pleads with me to go to Disneyland. Recently, a lawsuit has been brought against a Six Flags Theme Park located in Kentucky. In this amusement park case, a 13-year old girl, Kaitlyn, was severely injured while on the Six Flag’s Superman ride. According to the case, one of the cables on the ride broke off, hitting Kaitlyn and severing off both of her feet.
The young girl felt the cable whip against her body and instantly smelt a foul, burning odor. She was taken to the hospital and doctors were able to reattach one, but sadly not both, of her feet. Kaitlyn and her family are suing the amusement park for “failing to maintain the equipment and to ensure rider’s safety”. So far, the amusement park has denied any liability in Kaitlyn’s accident. However, the ride has been shut down and dismantled since the date of her injury.
Amusement park injuries are more common than we would like to believe. In 2005, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission put out a report that listed 15,000 injuries that occurred in the United States as a result of an amusement park ride. Amusement parks have the responsibility in maintaining a safe environment for its patrons and workers. If they fail in this regard, they may be found negligent and thus, liable, for any injuries that occur.
Outside our Sacramento home, in Dixon, CA, a boy was hit by a car as he was crossing Highway 113. The boy, 12 years old, was crossing the highway after leaving his school, Neighborhood Christian. According to reports, the boy was unable to see oncoming traffic because of a parked big-rig truck. Venturing into the road, a car traveling southbound struck him.
The boy was taken by ambulance to U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and was treated for a broken ankle and a possible perforated bowel.
The town of Dixon is in the beginning stages of moving the highway out of downtown. Having it in the center of town poses many risks. Neighborhood Christian School is a prime example of the dangers involved in having a highway nearby, as many students have to cross it to and from school. In addition, reports state that the only way to cross the highway from the school is through a marked crosswalk with no stop sign or signal to provide more safety for the students.
Brain Injuries are often times either fatal or severely debilitating. A young woman, Anna Kindt, knows the fragility of the brain first hand. Driving her car one night, Anna, lost control of her Honda Civic as she passed another vehicle and swerved into a nearby lawn. Slamming into several trees later, the Civic was left totaled, with a collapsed roof and smashed side.
Anna was rushed to the hospital. Suffering a traumatic brain injury, doctors tried to keep Anna’s brain from swelling.
There is a relatively new method some hospitals have been implementing to prevent serious brain injury and death after an accident such as Anna’s. The method is to place the patient in a state of hypothermia. This method of hypothermia has been show to have some positive effects on an injured brain. For one thing, when a brain suffers an injury, it will produce a chemical that can be harmful to its cells, hypothermia can slow this down. Hypothermia also reduces swelling, which in injured brain can cause severe mental damage and even death.
In Southern California, a lawsuit is being brought against Los Angeles County for the death of a 43-year old woman. The personal injury case seeks $45 million, claiming negligence, wrongful death, and medical malpractice against the county-staffed Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.
According to reports, the woman, Edith Rodriguez, was at the Los Angeles hospital’s emergency room, withering in pain for 45 minutes. During this time she was screaming for help and vomiting blood, but was refused to be seen. Instead, she was discharged and placed on a bench located outside of the hospital. County officers brought her back inside to try and get help, but Edith was again not seen.
Edith eventually became unresponsive and was, at last, taken into be seen. Sadly, this step was too late. Edith died in the emergency room from a perforated bowel. The hospital has since been downsized since this incidence as it was found not to meet Federal health standards.
There has been a world-wide recall of a toy called Aqua Dots. It is always frightening to find a toy recalled because of defects or a choking hazard, anything that may bring harm and injury to our children immediately send parents racing around the house, removing the invading toy threat. The recall of Aqua Dots is especially terrifying as researchers have found that the coating on the colorful toy beads, when ingested, metabolize into gamma hydroxy butyrate, better known as the date rape drug.
So far, at least two children in the United States and four in Australia have been hospitalized after swallowing the toy beads. One 20 month old boy, from Arkansas, starting stumbling around, throwing up and eventually passed out, after swallowing Aqua Dots. After several hours in the hospital he was released. The date rape chemical components are dangerous even to adults. According to an article by Find Law, the date rape drug “can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death”.
According to reports, Aqua Dots were planned to be produced using a non-toxic chemical that can be found in glue, but would up being made with a toxic chemical called 1,4-butanediol. This chemical was declared a Class I health hazard in 1999 by the Food and Drug Administration, indicating it can cause life-threatening harm.
Walking into one of our Sacramento grocery stores nowadays, I find myself wondering if I am going to be purchasing another product that will show to have some sort of bacteria attached to it, and after consumption, find that it has been recalled. Food poisoning is not the most pleasant of experiences. To add to this badgering thought, today I came across yet another article in the paper, talking about a recalled food product. This time we are presented with salmonella-tainted pot pies, yum yummy.
The maker of these pies, ConAgra Foods, have recalled the product after the pies were linked to a nationwide outbreak of the infection. Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are showing that more than 200 cases of salmonella infection have been reported this year, covering 34 states. This salmonella infection shows to be all from the same strain.
A federal lawsuit is being carried out against ConAgra Foods, representing two classes. One class is a consumer class, representing people who bought and/or ate the infected pies. The second class is called an injury class, which will represent all those who after eating such infected pies, became ill.
In our Sacramento area, owners and two employees of a Citrus Heights care facility are being arrested and tried for the deaths of three of their elderly residents. It was around this time last year that a fire tore through the halls of the facility. All employees and some residents were able to escape the fire, with the exception of three.
Reports from the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District are showing the reason why these two were not able to escape the fire was because of unlawful restraints that held them in their rooms. One woman, Doris Bower, was not able to leave because railing on the side of her bed prevented her from getting out. Another woman, Virginia Esler, was trapped in her room by a locked wheelchair. The third woman, Marjorie Leroux, had a bed that was completely surrounded by railing. People were able to get Marjorie out of the fire eventually, but she died several days later from trauma associated with the fire.
An investigation was carried out that showed the restraints in place during the fire were against safety regulations. Through the investigation, other violations were also revealed. The fire was discovered to be a result of a resident who ignited a stuffed chair in her bedroom with a cigarette. There are regulations within residential care facilities that do not allow for any patient with dementia to be allowed to smoke, except in designated areas. One of the owners found the fire that night and seemingly put it out. Unfortunately, the fire began to smolder again and began the disastrous fire that eventually ended in the death of three.
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