Race Does Matter

On August 7, 2012, Allen Daniel Hicks, Sr., died of a stroke.  The Hillsborough County FL resident was 51 years old.  At the time of his death, he was coaching Little Leaguers.

It is a tragedy to lose someone so young to a stroke, but it is not uncommon.  And race matters with strokes.

According to the Office of Minority Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, African Americans are 60 percent more likely to have a stroke than their white counterparts.  And African American men like Mr. Hicks are also 60 percent more likely to die from a stroke than are white men.

But Allen Hicks’s death was especially tragic because the circumstances surrounding it eerily echo those surrounding the death of a young black woman named Anna Brown a year earlier and 1000 miles away.

Both died from blood clots.  Mr. Hicks’ was in his brain; Ms. Brown’s was in her lungs.  Both died young and left children behind.  Both suffered from pain and paralysis before they died.  And both deaths could have been prevented with prompt treatment.

But here’s what really ties these two tragedies tightly together.  Both Allen Hicks and Anna Brown were taken to jail when they were taken ill, and both lay there without treatment while they suffered.

I wrote about Anna Brown’s horrifying death last year.  You can read the full column here, so I won’t rehash those details again.

But Allen Hicks’ story is also worth telling, because, along with Anna Brown’s, it raises too many questions for us to ignore.

A headline in Health News Florida directs you to the Tampa Bay Times for the details.  According to the Times, when Allen Hicks suffered the stroke in May 2012 that led to his death he was driving along a highway.  Despite experiencing sudden partial paralysis that caused him to swerve and hit a guard rail, he managed to avoid other vehicles and stop his car on the side of the road.  While he waited, witnesses called 911.

The newspaper account noted the extent of his stroke at that time, when it reported that Hicks was “speaking incoherently and unable to move his left arm” when the officers arrived.  And what was their response when faced with such classic symptoms of a stroke?  In a scene absurdly reminiscent of the movie Meet the Fockers, “Hicks was arrested on a charge of obstructing a law enforcement officer when he did not respond to commands to exit his car.”

Then it got worse.  His left side paralyzed, Hicks was brought to a jail, where he was apparently given no medical screening.  He was placed face down on the floor of a cell.  “From time to time his right limbs twitched,” the newspaper reported, as he apparently tried to crawl to help using the non-paralyzed side of his body.

He waited three hours for a medical evaluation.  The conclusion?  His stroke went unnoticed, but it was recommended that he receive a psychiatric evaluation.

Two hours later, he was transferred to another jail (this is how we often treat psychosis in America – jails are our de facto psychiatric holding facilities), but did not even receive his unnecessary psychiatric evaluation until noon the next day.  He was found to be “delusional with a poor memory.”

As the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

By then, he was past the time period during which “clot buster” drugs can save the brains of stroke victims, and so his brain was probably already permanently damaged.  But his jailers did not notice this.  He was not transported to Tampa General Hospital until twelve hours later, almost 36 hours after he suffered his stroke.

He held on for three months before he died.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office gave the following statement to the Tampa Bay Times:  "It is clear that mistakes were made by Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office employees and contracted medical staff employed by Armor Correctional Health Services."

The two parties reportedly paid a million dollar settlement to the family.  I doubt that this will make their pain go away.

Nor will it resolve all the troubling questions this story raises.

How could first responders and jailers fail to recognize obvious symptoms of stroke?

When did incoherent speech and paralysis become synonymous with mental illness?

And – at a time when so many wonder if there is a different standard for whites and blacks – why were Anna Brown and Allen Hicks brought to jail in the first place?

Paul Gionfriddo via email: gionfriddopaul@gmail.com.  Twitter: @pgionfriddo.  Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.gionfriddo.  LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/paulgionfriddo/