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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNot just the US: Sovereign Citizen Took an Elderly COVID Patient Out of the ICU
CORK, Ireland Joe McCarron was clearly struggling to breathe. His voice is barely audible when the doctor leans over and earnestly tells him: You have the right to decide what to do. You are barely able to breathe. We want you to stay.
McCarron is sitting in a wheelchair in a corridor of the Letterkenny University Hospital in County Donegal, Ireland. It is Sept. 14 and McCarron is at the center of a tug-of-war between the doctors who want to keep him in the ICU to treat a severe case of COVID-19 and a group of sovereign citizen activists who had come to rescue McCarron.
We came to Letterkenny to rescue my friend because they were trying to kill him, one of the activists, an Italian man named Antonio Mureddu, tells McCarron, who appears confused and distressed throughout the ordeal.
"We are walking home from the hospital and nobody is going to stop us. We are going home. We are saving the lives of the people," Mureddu declares before telling McCarron: "If you stay here, they are going to fucking kill you.
Ultimately McCarron left the hospital and was taken home. But days later the virus had spread to his brain, and he was rushed by ambulance back to the hospital and put on a ventilator. On Friday, McCarron died in the hospital.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzq4a/hes-gonna-die-with-us-sovereign-citizen-took-an-elderly-covid-patient-out-of-the-icu
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ISTM that this Mureddu guy should be charged with kidnapping and reckless endangerment at the very least, but what do I know?
Ray Bruns
(4,023 posts)Jilly_in_VA
(9,854 posts)I just don't know Irish law and was kind of waiting for some of our Americans abroad to weigh in.
SCantiGOP
(13,856 posts)If you walked into a room and saw a 3 year old playing with a loaded handgun, and didnt do anything to get it away from them, you would be guilty.
Same set of facts here. They took advantage of someone who wasnt in any condition to make a decision for himself, and they should be held accountable.
RockRaven
(14,784 posts)You can't ethically abide by people's decisions to contravene medical advice in a life-threatening manner when their capacity is impaired. That's like letting a drunk driver get behind the wheel and then saying "Well, he said he was able to drive home safely so we respected his decision."