Queens, NY — A lawsuit filed by the sister of a 33-year-old man with autism alleges that her brother was crushed to death by an untrained caregiver at the Bernard Fineson Developmental Center in August of 2012.
According to the suit, Rasheen Rose had been restrained in a fatal prone position by an untrained aide, along with two others when he died two years ago.
The victim’s sister, Shaniece Luke, said that representatives from the state-run facility, where her brother was resident, only informed her that Rasheen had collapsed and that they tried to revive him through CPR; but gave her no further information on the details of the incident. Luke said that the facility did not allow her to identify her brother’s body in person, instead, they had only shown her pictures of his body– which appeared to have been covered in blood.
In December of the same year, the medical examiner ruled Rasheen’s death as “sudden death during physical restraint of agitated individual”. Luke filed a lawsuit against the facility and one of their caregivers the following year.
Earlier this year, however, Luke received a billing from the facility which amounted to a whopping $11.67 million. The bill was allegedly to cover the Medicaid assistance Rasheen received from Aug. 6, 2002 until Aug. 6, 2014– the day he died at the facility. The state later on withdrew the bill, but the NYPD and the State Office of People with Developmental Disabilities, who investigated Rasheen’s death, concluded that no criminal act was committed during the incident, despite the fact that the medical examiner listed the cause of death as a homicide.
Luke, seeking justice for her brother, told :
“Why has no one been arrested yet? It’s been two years. He’s not important?”
The original article on the Pix 11 news site can be read here
Contributed by Althea Estrella Violeta