Missing disabled woman, 46, found living in subway 3 weeks after hospital discharge on Christmas Eve
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: A deaf, mute and autistic woman was finally found after going missing for three weeks and surviving the ordeal by living on the subways.
Samantha Primus, 46, disappeared after she was discharged from a hospital in Queens on Christmas Eve. She was found only three weeks later on Saturday, January 14. Ghislaine, her sister, and two good Samaritans found Primus at the Bowling Green station in Lower Manhattan after receiving a tip that she was riding the 1 train. After finding her, Ghislaine realized her sister had lost 10 pounds, was dehydrated and her feet were swollen from wearing only slippers and socks in the cold, per the NY Post.
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“My heart fell, my heart fell,” Ghislaine said at an evening press conference on Saturday, recalling the moment she found her sister. “She was wearing slippers and a pair of socks in … this cold, and she survived jumping from train to train, looking and hoping that she was going to get home. And we found her,” added Sophia, Primus and Ghislaine's sister. The 460year-old is currently being treated at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, while her family is weighing their legal options against Queens Hospital Center, which they claimed discharged Primus prematurely on a freezing cold night.
Samantha Primus has been found! Someone spotted her on a 1 train. Primus, who is non-verbal and cannot read, was discharged from Queens Hospital on December 24th bc hospital staff thought she was homeless. pic.twitter.com/4tODAZhaLp
— Kristin Thorne (@KristinThorne) January 14, 2023
According to the NY Post, Primus left her sister Joanna Peck's house in Elmont on early December 23, 2022, in a bid to find her way back to her mother's house in Brooklyn. She had been staying with Peck for the holidays. A bystander in Queens found Samantha that evening, lying on the ground in 18-degree weather in apparent need of help. Emergency responders rushed her to Queens Hospital Center, which treated her but let her walk back out at 2 am with nothing but a list of homeless shelters. The temperature that night had reportedly fallen to a frigid 7 degrees.
“If they had done their duty, my sister would not have gone through these horrendous three weeks in the cold. An apology will never be enough. We wonder what hearts and heads work at this hospital,” Sophia said at the Saturday presser, adding her embattled sister arrived at the hospital with no identification.
Primus' family is now pursuing legal action against the hospital, reportedly stating that they neglected to take proper care while discharging the her and were now refusing to give them any information. “If the Nassau County police report is accurate, then clearly this hospital was not only negligent but heartless, and appropriate legal action will be instituted,” said Sanford Rubenstein, the family’s lawyer, adding, “The city has to be held accountable for the actions of those who work for them in their hospitals.”
New York City Health & Hospitals, which runs Queens Hospital Center, reportedly said in a statement that HIPAA regulations prevent the disclosure of details about a patient’s care without the person’s consent. “We see patients who need various levels of care in all our emergency departments and afford them the confidentiality of treatment as the law provides,” it said.
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It is worth noting that Primus' family spent the past three weeks constantly searching for her. They reportedly paid close attention to the trains after most tipsters reported spotting her riding the rails. However, despite several tips, no police officers patrolling the subways came in contact with the helpless woman, Rev Kevin McCall of the Crisis Action Center noted. “So many police officers are patrolling the subway system but not one police officer found her. They were right there,” McCall said, as quoted by the NY Post.