NYC EMS

Nightmare Hospital
"Woodhull Hospital"
Distraught family members say Carolyn Fraiser Atta, a mother of four daughters, arrived at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn at 3 p.m. Tuesday complaining of shortness of breath; was admitted; and given a nebulizer used to treat asthma.

They say she then was not seen by a doctor or nurse until seven hours later, around 10 p.m. Two hours after that, Frasier Atta was dead.

"They robbed us of a mother; they robbed us of a sister; they robbed us of a friend, an aunt," said Atta's daughter, Ashley Omoarukhe.

Her older brother, Melvin Fraiser says he had tried repeatedly to get a doctor to see his sister.

She didn't have anything. No oxygen tank or anything, said Frasier. "She was just laying on the bed waiting to see a doctor.

One of her daughter's, an EMT, says her mother should have been seen by a doctor immediately because she had shortness of breath.

If vital signs were done, even just auscultation, the nurses would have detected fluid in the lungs," said Ashley Omoarukhe.

Fraiser says his sister was talking and coherent when she left the hospital around 7 p.m. The family phone rang after midnight.

They called my sister Ashley at 12:25 in the morning. She was home alone and told her over the phone. They did not know if she was a child or a minor," said Monica Omoarukhe. "They didn't ask her, they didn't know if she was an elderly person. They called her said 'Is this, who you are? You're the daughter? Your mother went under cardiac arrest she did not make it.

When they arrived at the hospital, the family says a nurse took them aside and advised them to get counsel.

"A nurse said, 'you know what, between us, and I don't want to put this on record, you need to get a lawyer. You're mom should not have been sitting there not able to breath and not been attended to.