LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The night of March 10, 2022, Linda Trapp’s trip to the hospital ended with her on the ground and in handcuffs.
Now, Trapp has filed a lawsuit against the Lexington Police Department, the contractor that operates Saint Joseph East’s emergency department, and others. The hospital itself was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Trapp alleges that her arrest while at the hospital left her with half a million dollars in medical debt.
Trapp, 61, is homeless and stays at the Catholic Action Center. The night of her arrest, she’d been taken by ambulance to Saint Joseph East after a fall, according to the lawsuit. She admitted to LEX 18 that she’d been drinking that night and was probably a handful, but said there was no reason for the hospital visit to end the way it did.
"Linda's part of a marginalized community,” said Trapp’s attorney, John Reynolds. “And you can see that night on the video that she was dismissed, she was literally shooed away from the hospital, and she was wrongfully arrested."
Body camera footage (Warning: Contains strong language):
At some point during Trapp’s hospital visit, police were called. In a responding officer’s body camera footage, provided to LEX 18 by Reynolds, a healthcare worker can be heard saying that Trapp had tried to hit healthcare staff and wouldn’t leave the hospital.
Not long after walking in the room, the arresting officer can be heard telling Trapp, “I’ll drag you out and throw you out on the sidewalk.”
In the body camera footage, Trapp can be heard telling the officer and healthcare staff that she needs a negative COVID test in order to return to the Catholic Action Center.
Catholic Action Center director Ginny Ramsey confirmed that at the time of the incident, residents had to show a negative COVID test result in order to return to the center after being out.
The police and healthcare workers can be heard in the video repeatedly urging Trapp to leave the hospital.
Trapp asked for her cane multiple times, and healthcare workers told her she hadn’t brought one. Trapp later told LEX 18 that she had not brought her cane that night but thought she had.
Trapp slowly made her way out of the building, though she stopped multiple times and at one point dropped to the ground before getting back up to walk out.
When Trapp was outside of the hospital and about to walk down the hill and off the property, she stopped and again asked for her cane.
A healthcare worker can be heard again telling her that she hadn’t brought a cane. One of the responding officers then recommends that she grab a tree branch.
“There are some good trees over there downtown,” the officer can be heard saying on the video.
When the officer tells Trapp a final time that she did not bring a cane and to “go,” Trapp can be heard saying “you’re a liar.”
At that point the officer can be seen approaching Trapp. The officer cannot be heard telling Trapp that she’s under arrest or giving any commands before grabbing her arm.
“She was never told that she was under arrest,” Reynolds told LEX 18. “She was never told to put her hands behind her back, she was grabbed and forcefully taken to the ground.”
The arrest left Trapp with a broken leg that required multiple surgeries, the lawsuit claims.
In the body camera footage, Trapp can be heard complaining multiple times after being arrested that her knee had been broken. She asked for an X-ray, but the lawsuit says Trapp was taken to jail instead. Trapp was later X-rayed and hospitalized for a broken leg.
Response from police, hospital
The Lexington Police Department said they couldn’t comment on the situation or the allegations in the lawsuit because of the pending litigation.
LEX 18 obtained the personnel file of the Lexington police officer named as a defendant in the lawsuit, Myles Foster. We found no mention of the incident in the file, so we went back to Lexington police to ask if there’d been a review of the incident that wasn’t in the file. They again said they couldn’t respond because of the ongoing litigation.
CHI Saint Joseph Health released the following statement about the incident: “At CHI Saint Joseph Health, the safety and well-being of our patients and our caregivers are our top priority. Our values of compassion, inclusion, integrity, excellence, and collaboration guide us as we care for our patients. We recognize each person as an individual worthy of humankindness. We are also concerned about the growing prevalence of violence against nurses and other healthcare workers, and encourage our caregivers to seek support if they feel threatened. We strive to maintain a balance between humankindness and keeping our patients and caregivers safe and have a process for patient feedback. Out of respect for patient privacy laws, we are not able to discuss the specifics of a patient’s care.”
‘All of us deserve compassion’
Trapp was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, according to her arrest citation.
But she and her attorney said she shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place.
When asked why she thought she was treated the way she was, Trapp said “because I was categorized as homeless.”
"They were taunting her,” Reynolds said. “It was sort of a group mentality or mob mentality, they were really taunting her or making fun of her."
"If they'd given me a test, it would've come back negative and I would've made it back here,” Trapp said during an interview at the Catholic Action Center.
LEX 18 watched the video with Ramsey at the Catholic Action Center.
“She was leaving,” Ramsey said while watching the video of the arrest. “All she asked was to get the COVID test.”
While hospitals are not supposed to discharge homeless people directly to the streets, that is not the case if the patient stayed in the emergency department and wasn’t admitted, Ramsey said.
“But as human beings and as humanity, as a faith-based hospital, I can't believe they wouldn't make the effort to find a way for her to get back to the center,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey hopes that better training will come from the incident.
“All of our folks, all of us deserve compassion from our police, from our hospitals,” Ramsey said. “We did not see that with the way Linda was treated.”
