Mt. Lebanon woman sues after police detain her during epileptic seizure
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Jessica Yochum
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When Jessica Yochum had an epileptic seizure at work in February, her co-workers at Houlihan's at the Galleria knew what was happening.
They called 911 and told dispatchers the young woman was seizing.
But when emergency responders from the Medical Rescue Team South Authority ambulance service and Mt. Lebanon police arrived, they did not follow what are considered by experts to be standard protocols for such an event.
They handcuffed Ms. Yochum, 23, shackled her and restrained her head. All that, her attorney said, exacerbated the seizure.
By the time they got her to St. Clair Hospital, she had inadvertently bitten one of the ambulance workers, and the police were accusing her of being on cocaine.
They charged her with aggravated assault for the bite -- even after they learned from Ms. Yochum's doctor that the girl had epilepsy and was not taking any illegal drugs.
The case was ultimately dismissed by a magisterial district judge, but Ms. Yochum filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the parties involved, alleging a number of counts, including violations of her due process rights, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Neither officials at MRTSA nor the police department had seen the lawsuit Thursday and said they could not comment. The individual defendants named are emergency responders Gregory Petro and Richard Weisner, as well as Officer Jeffrey Frolo.
Ms. Yochum, a recent graduate of Penn State University who hopes to go to graduate school and become a speech pathologist, had her first seizure in 2008 while studying in Spain.
The second seizure came while she was driving across the Hot Metal Bridge. That time, she said, Pittsburgh police and paramedics were wonderful with her. They left her inside her vehicle until the seizure had ended, and waited with her until she had recovered.
The seizure at Houlihan's was only her third. Ms. Yochum doesn't remember anything about it -- only the things leading up to the seizure. She got intense nausea, a feeling of deja vu and thought that she was about to fall over.
The rest of what happened has been pieced together for Ms. Yochum by what her coworkers saw -- and later what her parents saw at the hospital.
When the emergency responders got to Houlihan's, she said, "They started to restrain me and said I wasn't having a seizure, I was having a drug overdose.
First Published July 16, 2010 12:00 am
