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Woman dies after male gym employee refuses to enter ladies locker room

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Camp Lo

Banned
http://www.krmg.com/news/news/local/woman-dies-after-male-gym-employee-refuses-enter-l/nYThF/

Emily Hamlin collapsed in a bathroom stall of the women’s locker room of a health club.
Another woman, Stephanie Dick, heard her fall and quickly ran to the front desk to tell employees.
But there wasn’t a female employee there and the man on duty, Sean Higgins refused to go into the ladies locker room.
In a sworn affidavit Dick told the court “he said he didn’t know what to do and that he wasn’t allowed to go into the ladies’ bathroom.”
“He said he was the only one working there and that a girl was expected to come in, but he didn’t know when she would be there.”
That decision proved critical as Hamlin died minutes later.
No cause of death has been announced.
Hamlin’s family has filed a lawsuit against the Planet Fitness in Long Island, New York
“I want to know why no one helped her!” Hamlin’s mother told the New York Post.
“He could have simply called 911! It’s baffling to me.”
Video footage shows two women trying to get Higgins to act and he’s seen calmly looking at a computer during the incident.
Higgins called 911 nearly five minutes after Hamlin collapsed and a female employee with CPR training found the girl with a weak pulse.

Emergency workers arrived a few minutes later and Hamlin was declared dead shortly afterwards.

Is the stigma to not enter a women's restroom if you're a man strong enough to ignore a cry for help?

Poorly written and ambiguous article (can't even tell when the female employee showed up), here is a better one:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/left_to_die_in_the_ladies_room_sqPmXV8R5nElvtf08DYrJI

“I heard [a] flush, then a thud,” the member, Stephanie Dick, recalled in a sworn affidavit about the February 2012 incident. “I saw a woman’s arm drop to the floor, followed immediately by a loud snoring sound.”

Dick said she dashed to the front desk and pleaded with gym employee Sean Higgins to help. 

Dick said that, getting nowhere, she ran back to Hamlin and pounded on her locked stall door. Another gym member heard and ran out to the front desk.

“She was yelling at Sean to call 911,” Dick recalled.

Video shows the second member waving her arms and pointing to the bathroom at 5:21 a.m. Higgins, at one point, is seen idly looking at a computer screen. 

Higgins picked up the phone to dial 911 4 1/2 minutes after learning of Hamlin’s collapse, the video’s time stamp shows. 

As Dick talked to the 911 operator via cellphone — eight minutes after members alerted the front desk — another Planet Fitness employee, Kristin Smith, showed up in the locker room and “immediately” checked Hamlin’s pulse, finding it “weak,” the lawyer says.

Smith knows CPR but didn’t perform it, Charnas alleged.
 

Dennis

Banned
Ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous.

Reminds me of those stories we get once in a while where a man is afraid to help a lost child because he is afraid people are going to think he is a pedophile.
 

LiK

Member
That guy's an idiot! If someone is in trouble, they won't care if you enter the ladies room.
 

Gallbaro

Banned
I do not see how a cashier's inaction caused a woman to die.

All he and the women could do is call 911, if all three were too stupid, then blame is equal.
 
Video footage shows two women trying to get Higgins to act and he’s seen calmly looking at a computer during the incident.
Higgins called 911 nearly five minutes after Hamlin collapsed and a female employee with CPR training found the girl with a weak pulse.

This doesn't seem to be about him not wanting to go into the ladies room so much as him not giving a fuck.
 

zeitgeist

Member
Why wouldn't he call an ambulance at least? He didn't really even need to go into the locker room. What could he have done to help her that the other women couldn't do?

It might be crazy that the family is suing Planet Fitness, it's not like he would have had the ability to save her.
 

OnPoint

Member
Was he worried about getting fired? Was that it? Because if that's it then he should be brought up on murder charges.
 

Telaso

Banned
The sad part of this all is though, that if he would have gone in and saved her, he would later be fired for going into the locker room anyway.

Messed up world we live in.
 

Zoe

Member
He should have called 911 off the bat.

But was he actually trained for anything more than that?
 

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
The sad part of this all is though, that if he would have gone in and saved her, he would later be fired for going into the locker room anyway.

Messed up world we live in.

Or abducted by female aliens taken to a sex planet for life with every desire fulfilled.

Saying he would definitely get fired is ridiculous.

Men are just scared that the female victim may twist the story in another direction. Not saying it always happens (or even happens frequently), but men are just terrified at that possibility.
Glad I am a MAN then and would rather try and help save a life than think of a small consequence.
 

Rockandrollclown

lookwhatyou'vedone
Maybe because they do not have phones on them (they are at the gym) and/or do not know anything about CPR, etc.

I will grant that I don't understand why he didn't call for an ambulance at least. It just seems the crux of the story is he didn't go in. Maybe he didn't know CPR or how to help? Maybe he panicked and froze up.
 

Raiden

Banned
No cause of death has been found. I really doubt the dude could have changed that. She just collapsed and died..

Still stupid of him not to go in there.
 
Maybe I am missing something. He should have helped, but why didn't the ladies arguing with him to help, help?

I hate playing the blame game, but in this day and age when almost everyone has a cell phone the first thing to do is call for help, and then run for nearby help. Because unless the nearby help you run to is a doctor, in situations like this they will just call for help too. When every second counts, you want emergency services on their way ASAP. At least that's how I'd hope people would react if I were to suddenly collapse in front of them. Don't play doctor, get me one!

That said, this guy is a fucking idiot...
 

John Dunbar

correct about everything
you'd think someone else would have just called help instead. i hear you can carry phones with you these days.
 
Men are just scared that the female victim may twist the story in another direction. Not saying it always happens (or even happens frequently), but men are just terrified at that possibility.

Yeah but in an emergency situation would you be thinking of that? I know I wouldn't be.
 

Matugi

Member
A lot of people here are REALLY quick to judge, yeesh. As others have stated, we have no idea whether or not he was even trained to perform CPR or if he may have had a mini-crisis in the line of action. It's the bystander effect.
 
The ladies couldn't do anything or call for 911 either? Guy shoulda did something, but really what could he have done? Anyone could have called 911
 

Darklord

Banned
Men are just scared that the female victim may twist the story in another direction. Not saying it always happens (or even happens frequently), but men are just terrified at that possibility.

Would a man not give a child CPR in case he was called a pedophile as well? That man should man the fuck up.
 

diehard

Fleer
Outside of drowning, CPR has a ridiculously low chance of saving someone.. but it was still idiotic to not do it.
 

Gallbaro

Banned
Or abducted by female aliens taken to a sex planet for life with every desire fulfilled.

Saying he would definitely get fired is ridiculous.

Glad I am a MAN then and would rather try and help save a life than think of a small consequence.

Bringing artificial gender roles into this discussion is sexist.
 

Camp Lo

Banned
Except for when a female employee went in there she had a slight pulse.

Yeah, he didn't do anything for 5 minutes. I think it could be argued that he should have done something or at least trained to call 911. He was probably trained to call 911 if there was an accident in the gym area.
 

BobLoblaw

Banned
Not trying to defend the guy, but how do we know exactly what he was told and how urgent the request was communicated? If someone says, "Hey. Someone passed out in the stall," yeah, I might investigate if there's something that I have been trained to do, but why didn't the lady who first noticed say "Call 911!" instead of asking him to go in to help? And assuming he did and wasn't trained, he probably still would've be criticized for...not calling 911.
 
He obviously should have called 911 right away, doesn't make any sense to delay that at all. That's where he fucked up.
As for entering the locker room, I'm not sure what he could have done that would have made any difference here? She needed medical assistance, not just another person in the room.
 
I misunderstood the thread title COMPLETELY.

I thought a woman was trying to get a man to go into the ladies locker room, and when he refused, she got so upset she passed out and died of a heart attack or an aneurism.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Sad, and he's a bit of a dumbass, but in this hyper-litigious society we live in I can't blame anybody for being paranoid.

He should have dialed 911 though I mean come on.
 

linkboy

Member
I work in a gym on an AF base and if something like this happens, screw it, I'm going in to help.

If some lady wants to get all butthurt about it, fuck'em.
 
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