A nurse from Bolingbrook, Chicago, has been sentenced to 24 months of probation after pleading guilty to one count of criminal neglect of a 5-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and scoliosis. Full story here.
A London nightclub's decision to turn away a girl with disabilities who uses crutches has been called "absolutely ludicrous" by the Disability Rights Commission in the UK. The young woman, who has a bone disease, said she felt "angry and humilated" after she was refused entry on the grounds her cruthces could be "potential offensive weapons." Full story here.
A Family Dollar clerk in Fort Worth, Texas, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he used a crowbar to beat a deaf customer. The thirty-year old man, who has been deaf since the age of 2 and uses sign language to communicate, was hit on his head with a crowbar when he tried to pay for some softdrinks. The clerk, it is said, hit the man because he thought he was being rude by not talking to him. Full story here.A disturbing story from the Associated Press about a group of students at a Washington high school for the deaf that scrawled KKK and swastikas on a black student's body with a marker while holding him against this will. District of Columbia police are investigating the attack by seven students - six white and one black - as a possible hate crime. Full story here.
Via the LA Times comes the news that Mary Ann Jones, advocate for people with disabilties, died on September 23. She was 63. Jones, who was executive director of the Westside Center for Independent Living in Los Angeles, and who devoted the last three decades to working on behalf of people with disabilities, was a quadriplegic since she was 23. Among the many honors Jones received for her work were a Los Angeles Country Commission on Disability Access Award and Pioneer Women Award from the Los Angeles City Commission on the Status of Women. She is remembered by Aliza Barzilay, interim executive director of the Westside Center, as a "committed, hard-working yet gracious leader who dedicated her life to furthering the cause of disability rights."
According to this report in USA Today, women are far less likely to receive implantable heart defibrillators than men, and African Americans are less likely to receive them than white patients. The news studies are among the first to show underuse and disparities in the use of implantable defibrillators, which can save people at risk of sudden cardiac death.
A 52-year old woman was struck by a train and seriously injured after the back wheels of her electric wheelchair got stuck on the yellow studded area of a New York Penn Station subway platform. According to this article, the woman was initially listed in serious condition with head injuries and fractures to her face and legs. For feminist-disability analyses of the issues at stake in the incident see here and here.
