"The NYPD Is Investigating What Might Be the City's First Coronavirus-Related Homicide"

From the N.Y. Daily News (Rocco Parascandola, Ellen Moynihan & John Annese):

[Victim Janie] Marshall, who was at the hospital for a bowel obstruction, innocently grabbed a metal stand in a hallway near a bed where [Cassandra] Lundy, a seizure patient, was sitting around 2 p.m. Saturday, police sources said.

Lundy lashed out, complaining Marshall wasn't following coronavirus social distancing guidelines, and allegedly slugged her in the head, knocking her to the ground, according to police sources….

Lundy … has 17 prior arrests, on charges including drug possession, trespass, assault and strangulation, sources said.

Comments

[Jeff Walden]

Would allegedly slugging someone in the head be following coronavirus social distancing guidelines? Asking for...uh, no one in particular.

[Eddy]

I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that logical thinking was not necessarily one of the suspect's defining characteristics.

[Jeff Walden]

Oh, undoubtedly.

[Eddy]

"Hospital police issued Lundy a disorderly conduct summons after the attack and released her, sources said."

Why not arrest her - because they were worried she would have another seizure in prison? Or some other cause?

Assuming the "sources" are correct, of course.

[Dr. Ed]

It's not just that, I don't see why they released a "seizure patient" in the first place, that's big time liability if anything went wrong, even if she wasn't high on something - which with her record is a reasonable suspicion. Based on the facts here, it would sound to me like they've got grounds for an involuntary psych hold on "threat to others."

Now this is all under ideal circumstances, which I suspect don't currently exist in that hospital -- along with the "release every prisoner" mentality -- but still....

[Kazinski]

They've stopped arresting people in NYC.

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

[Sarcastr0]

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

You're no noir hero, chief.

[sam123]

This witch had 17 prior arrests. So much for a draconian criminal justice system. Yes lets release more of these lunatics

[Sarcastr0]

Way to overgeneralize based on an anecdote.

[RoyMo]

It was things like this that lead to Draconian sentencing in the first place. The long list of priors, a really unacceptable example of antisocial behavior, and so forth... this is how we went from the 1930s to 60s liberalization of Fugitive from a Chain Gang to the tough on crime regime of 1970s-2000s Dirty Harry

[Sarcastr0]

Things like what? Because depending on the answer I can read like four different theses into your post, some of which I agree with and some of which I do now.

[Dr. Ed]

"Way to overgeneralize based on an anecdote."

Have you been arrested 17 different times?

[Sarcastr0]

As far as you know, I have. Maybe I loved Iraq War protesting or something. Arrests are not guilt.
You want a three strikes law for arrests?

Policy made based on tragic anecdotes is bad policy. This kind of knee-jerk law and order carping even on this sometimes libertarian Conspiracy leaves me really unimpressed.

[Dr. Ed]

You are talking about an ideal in a society with a functioning legal system where those who are guilty are convicted and hence the public has the ability to make the distinction between the accusation and the conviction.

It is entirely possible to protest without getting arrested, although charges like "assault" and "strangulation" do not correlate to a protest. And Dr. King wouldn't have been able to write "letters from Birmingham jail" if he hadn't been IN the Birmingham jail -- if you want to get arrested for your cause, you ought to be willing to be convicted and do time for it.

Yes, I'll make a distinction between someone who has been arrested SEVENTEEN times and someone who hasn't...

[Eddy]

I imagine if you ask her she'll say that they were simply harassing her for no reason except they didn't like her.

[Dr. Ed]

Oh, I think that some form of the word "racism" would be in there as well.

Just sayin....

[Sarcastr0]

What exactly are you saying?

[Sarcastr0]

Ed, the point is one of fundamental due process. Number of arrest do not - cannot - equal guilt in any kind of fair criminal law regime.

This pre-crime 'if you have enough run-ins with law enforcement you're guilty of something' is facile nonsense. When you actually try and put it in operation, you can't make a policy out of it that doesn't end in a police state.

[Dr. Ed]

But if your due process doesn't involve some reasonable expectation of punishment for the guilty, the public will demand a police state.
Never forget that Hitler won a basically fair election.

[hardreaders]

Seems like a bit of a stretch to deem this CV19 related. Neither person had it. Neither one had been exposed as far as the facts reveal. More like an attempt to generate an attention grabbing lead in to the article.

Also, says there were no witnesses (other than obviously the perp and the victim, the latter also being a goner). So more likely given the perp’s history she was just itching to cause trouble for no particular reason, and the CV19 excuse given after the fact was just that, an excuse. As the other commenters noted, the perp’s behavior was inconsistent with and contradicted the excuse given.

[Longtobefree]

Nothing at all to do with the Chinese Communist flu.
Manslaughter at best, never going to get a homicide conviction.
Reason joins the mainstream media at last.

Oh, and by the way, never believe Cassandra - - - - -

[Dr. Ed]

I've been told that the majority of the 492 people who died in the Coconut Grove fire (Boston, 1942) died not from the fire itself but the massive pileup of bodies caused by everyone attempting to exit through a single rotating door which had jammed. (This fire is why most fire codes now require outward-opening exit doors next to fire doors.)

Panic can be (and often is) fatal on its own accord.

Panic will lead quasi-rational people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't -- or will serve as justification for doing so. Panic leads to vigilantism and that can get really ugly quite quickly -- case in point Vinalhaven Island and the construction workers from NJ (who'd been there since November).

So the "Chinese Communist Flu" was the indirect cause of this fatality.

[Sarcastr0]

Chinese Communist Flu

Red-baiting weirdo.

[Bob from Ohio]

" The Greenland Group, which manages high-end real estate projects in Sydney and Melbourne, proactively drained Australian supplies of anti-coronavirus equipment, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Three million surgical masks, 500,000 pairs of gloves and bulk supplies of sanitiser and wipes were bought up in Australia and other countries where Greenland operates. "

China wants you to die, but keep defending them.

[Sarcastr0]

Noting that this spiraling name game is silly at best, and fomenting domestic anti-Asian racism at worst, is not defending China.

Also, you're not really making a case for China wanting me dead, just that you're a bloodthirsty lunatic.

[David Bremer]

He was quoting Longtobefree, not using it himself. But sentiment is on point.

[Sarcastr0]

Understood.

Ed, withdrawn. My bone to pick appears to be Longtobefree.

And now with Bob.

[timlister82]

Communists deserve to be baited at every opportunity. It's the most effective method for reminding them of their hypocrisy and/or naivety.

[Bob from Ohio]

"“Chinese Communist Flu” was the indirect cause of this fatality."

Be careful, nothing riles up the libs here more than attacking Communists.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, it's also not the flu.

[Bob from Ohio]

"After letting Lundy go with a summons, the hospital didn’t contact the NYPD until almost five hours after Marshall died, sources said. "

So a hospital cop issued a summons for a murder suspect and then waited hours to call the regular police. Somebody needs firing.

[Dr. Ed]

Ummm -- who had primary law enforcement powers there?

If the hospital police are sworn officers with primary authority in the hospital, with arrest powers and the rest (they did summons her), then it might be more of a protocol issue than anything else -- not unlike city and state police.

Some states have a requirement that homicides be investigated by the state police and not the municipal police (sometimes with exceptions for large city departments). My guess is that NYC may have a similar rule.

[Bob from Ohio]

Three reporters but could not get the "source" to say how many convictions instead of "17 prior arrests"?

[Dr. Ed]

You can't in Massachusetts -- the Criminal Offender Records Act prevents the general public from knowing about convictions while arrests are public records. Yes, you can go to the courthouse and pull the file on each arrest (every file that isn't sealed) and try to figure out how the charge was disposed of (if it yet has -- continued is often common) -- but that involves work.

Far easier to type the person's name into NEXIS and pull up the news stories on the old arrests.

[Bob from Ohio]

Yes, but they said the "source" provided the number of arrests.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us from unreasonable seizure patients, isn't it?

[Eugene Volokh]

Funny!

[Eugene Volokh]

Oh, and don't forget the right of the computer programmers peaceably to assemble.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Assembly is so last century. Hip programmers brew java beans.

[Eddy]

The latest update I could find - the dead woman's relatives weren't told what's going on, but they'd sure like answers.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kin-of-coronavirus-assault-victim-says-brooklyn-hospital-waited-hours-after-her-death-to-contact-family/ar-BB11VXnj