Deaf Woman Found Burned On The Street

Deaf News: Police: Woman found burned on Dale Street in Rochester.

ROCHESTER, NY -- Rochester Police say that a woman was found burned on Dale Street on Sunday, and the incident is being investigated as a suicide attempt.

News10NBC does not normally report on suicides, but many people in the area had questions about what happened on Sunday in broad daylight.

Officers say they were called to a home on Dale Street around, where they found a woman on fire in a field located on a empty lot of the street.

The woman, reportedly somewhere between 40 and 50 years of age, was transported to Strong Memorial Hospital, where she is in guarded condition.

Tony Alonzo Thompson- a neighbor of the woman- was among those who found her. He was walking around the neighborhood when he found her, and immediately called 911.

"I'm trying to tell her, 'ma'am, it's gonna be alright.' I'm telling her it's gonna be alright. It's going to be alright.... but I'm crying because I knew her."

"She's looking right at," he said, "She's Deaf... and she pointed. She's naked, her pants are down to her ankles... and she was smoking."

Holly Mortensen, who lives across from the field where the woman was found, is still in shock over what happened.

"That's a little too close to home, that's my first reaction."

Mortensen was awakened by the police and firefighters that had arrived in the neighborhood, and when she looked outside, she saw one of her neighbors on fire.

"She wasn't moving, she was just laying there at the middle of the field," she recalls, "The EMTs put a respirator on her, or a resuscitator on her."

Fire and police have confirmed the event is now being investigated as a suicide attempt and that there is no danger to the public. Because of the sensitivity of the situation, News10NBC will not be releasing the name of the woman.

Deaf News: Deaf and dying: How a volunteer team brings palliative care comfort through communication in the capital of Canada.

OTTAWA -- Ottawa Citizen: The first experience Monica Elaine Campbell had with palliative care was helping a woman who had lost her ability to speak because of throat cancer.

Campbell, profoundly Deaf since birth, is an excellent lip reader and staff at an Ottawa Hospital asked if she could interpret the dying woman’s words. The woman had been communicating with paper and pen, but now was too weak even to do that.

“I was very hesitant. Then I thought, well, the least I could do is give it a try,” said Campbell, who is able to speak despite never having heard a word herself. “I put my hand on her right arm and said, ‘I’ve never done this before. I will try my best.”

WATCH: Video with CC - Ottawa Citizen.

Campbell leaned close as the woman mouthed her words. Campbell repeated it back and had the woman nod yes if she had understood correctly. She spent five hours with the woman, relaying messages between her and her family and the medical team. She was able to interpret about 85 per cent of what the woman told her.

“I came away a different person,” Campbell said. “I was very touched by the experience.”

The dying woman had not been Deaf, but the experience got Campbell thinking about the communication needs of people like herself: the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. A few years later, Campbell was asked to help a Deaf friend who was about to receive bad news about her cancer diagnosis.

“I didn’t know much about palliative care, but she was struggling with her terminal illness,” Campbell said. “I thought, my goodness, what if that was me? I thought, I should talk to my Deaf friends about death and dying and what our experiences have been.”

Those conversations led Campbell and her friend, sign language interpreter Christine Wilson, to start up the Ottawa Deaf Palliative Care Team, a group of volunteers that provide end-of-life care for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and their families. In 1999, she enrolled in palliative care courses at Algonquin College with two Deaf colleagues (the Deaf use a capital D to refer to the sub-culture of people who communicate with sign language; “Hard of Hearing” are those who have lost some or most of the hearing but can still use some speech, sometimes augmented with sign language; the “Deafened” or “Oral Deaf” have lost some or all of their hearing, but either learned to speak before their deafness or, like Campbell, learned to speak despite it.) Read More at Ottawa Citizen.

Deaf Immigrant Awarded $250K Settlement

VIDEO [CC] - Deaf News: Deaf Man receives $250K settlement after being jailed with no access to interpreter in Virginia.



ARLINGTON, VA -- NBC4 Washington: A Deaf man will receive a $250,000 settlement from the Arlington County Sheriff's Office after it failed to provide a sign language interpreter for him while he was jailed, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Friday.



The man, Abreham Zemedagegehu, has said he spent part of his six-week stay at the Arlington County Detention Facility in 2014 unaware of the charges against him. The Justice Department launched an investigation into Zemedagegehu's claim last year.

NBC News covered a story about Abreham Zemedagegehu and his experience in jail without an interpreter.



"I felt like I was losing my mind," Zemedagegehu said through an interpreter in an interview at his lawyer's office. "I thought Virginia would give me an interpreter and they said no. That's why I felt lost."



Zemedagegehu also said the jail failed provide a communications device to help him communicate with his lawyer and performed medical procedures on him without explaining them or getting his consent.



A native of Ethiopia, he can communicate in American Sign Language but is largely unable to communicate in written English.



Zemedagegehu sued the sheriff's office in federal court, saying his treatment failed to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).



Among the concerns raised in his lawsuit was the jail's reliance on teletypewriter devices to allow Deaf inmates to communicate with people outside the jail. The sheriff's office has defended its use of the TTY machine, but Zemedagegehu's lawsuit said the device is useless for someone who can't read English and obsolete because videophones are now used predominantly in the Deaf community.



Zemedagegehu's ordeal began Feb. 2, 2014, when he was arrested after being accused of stealing another man's iPad. He said he pleaded guilty to the charge because a plea bargain offered him a sentence of time served. Later, though, the man who accused him of the theft said he'd found the device and rescinded his accusation.



Under the settlement, the sheriff's office will pay $250,000 to Zemedagegehu, and must take steps to comply with the ADA. This includes appointing an ADA coordinator, providing ADA training to its staff, and ensuring that auxiliary aids and services are provided. The Justice Department said the sheriff's office has taken several steps to improve its ADA compliance even before finalizing the settlement agreement.



"People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing must be able to communicate clearly with law enforcement officials," said Tracy Doherty-McCormick, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a statement Friday. "Through this settlement agreement, the Arlington County Sheriff has taken important steps to ensure that the operations of the Arlington County Detention Facility are in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act."



Source: Deaf Man Receives $250K Settlement After Being Jailed With No Access to Interpreter in Arlington | NBC4 Washington.



Follow us: @nbcwashington on Twitter | NBCWashington on Facebook



Related:

Deaf Man Jailed With No Access To Interpreter

Ethiopian Immigrant's Role Model For Deaf Inmates

Deaf Immigrant Awarded $250K Settlement

The D.C. Police Department's Deaf Liaison

VIDEO: Deaf News: Meet the DC Police Department's Deaf Liaison officers.



WASHINGTON -- NBC4: For more than a decade, the D.C. police department's Deaf and Hard of Hearing Liaison Unit has been building bridges with the Deaf community.



It's the only specialized police unit in the country dedicated to protecting Deaf people.



Officer Myra Jordan came up with the idea 14 years ago. She learned sign language as a child, when she played with a neighbor who was Deaf.

The 25-year veteran of the department went to the chief with her idea to combine her love for police work and sign language.



"The Metropolitan Police Department was struggling with communicating or interacting with the Deaf community, and we needed to build that bridge," Jordan said.



She was joined on the unit two years ago by Officer Teyna Ellis. She learned how to sign so she could help at her church.



In addition to the pair's regular patrol duties, they train other officers in the basics of communicating with Deaf people, like "knowing the universal sign of a Deaf person, to be able to communicate with them during a traffic stop," Ellis said.



Advocates for the Deaf community say the liaison unit has made a particularly big impact in dealing with Deaf victims of domestic violence.



"In the past, people didn’t know who to talk with and they didn’t feel comfortable making the report because they didn’t know who is going to understand me ... but now there is someone who speaks my language," said Shazia Siddiqi. She is executive director of the organization DAWN, which aims to end abuse in the Deaf community.



Jordan said the unit's work is paying off for police and for the community. She says it comes down to one word: trust.



"The officers aren't afraid of the unknown because they know the unknown now, and the community isn't afraid because they trust the police," she said.



Ellis and Jordan regularly get requests to help train officers from other police departments. They said they're proud that D.C. is leading the nation.



SOURCE

Deaf Basketball Player Heads To Nationals

VIDEO [CC] - 8-year-old basketball star Zeke Ortiz says being Deaf has no limits.



NBC FREDERICK, MD - Ask 8-year-old Zeke Ortiz what he wants to be when he grows up, and he'll answer without hesitation - a pro basketball player.



Zeke has been playing since he was a 2-year-old, but he decided earlier this year it was time to step up his game. That meant leaving his YMCA league to join a more competitive team - the Playmakers.



"The team I'm with now is a challenge," Zeke said. "It's tough for me." But it wasn't the skill set or the level of competition that was the biggest hurdle in making the change for Zeke. It was the fact that none of his new teammates knew how to sign.

To activate this feature, press the "CC" button.

Zeke, his 10-year-old brother Zion, their parents, grandparents and nine cousins are all Deaf - and this was Zeke's first time playing a sport with hearing teammates.



"He's lucky that he was born into a family of Deaf people and to have Deaf parents, so he'd had full access to communication since birth," his mom, Jennifer Yost Ortiz, said.



Zeke, who attends a Deaf school, had always been able to communicate with his family and peers. When he joined the Playmakers, his parents say that for the first time, he felt lost.



"Everybody was talking," Zeke said. "I didn't know what they were saying or what to do. Nobody was interpreting for me."



"At the very beginning, the first practice, Zeke kept looking at me saying, 'I don't understand,' Ortiz said. "And we said, 'It's okay, just watch.'"



Without an interpreter, it was like a guessing game. Zeke couldn't do the little things, like hear a whistle blow or a call being made.



His father, a former basketball player, picked up on the coach's signals and was able to interpret plays and drills... Read more: nbcnews.com/nightly-news/how-deaf-8-year-old-boy-overcame-his-fears-play

Deaf Pregnant Woman Sues Florida Hospital

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Deaf woman suing for interpeter in delivery room.



WPTV BOYNTON BEACH - Margaret Weiss is due to have her second child in less than a month. The Boynton Beach mother is Deaf and wants a real life interpreter in the delivery room with her, but she says her hospital is refusing to provide that.



"They're discriminating against me," explained Weiss, with the help of a certified sign language interpreter. She explained the fear she has about going into the delivery room at Bethesda Hospital. "It's really serious. What if there was something life-threatening that happened during the delivery?" said Weiss.

Weiss has filed a lawsuit against Bethesda for denying her request for a live interpreter to be in the room with her. The hospital provides the hearing impaired with VRIs or Video Remote Interpreting.



Weiss says this is not effective communication for a woman giving birth and ultimately a violation of the Americans Disabilities Act.



"No one can sit there in labor and just watch a fixed screen," said Weiss. "You can't do that. It's much better to have a live interpreter that's mobile and can move around. It's a lot more comfortable. They can lean over. They can get in a different spot." Weiss says on top that, in her experience, the VRIs do not work all the time.



Weiss said she had to go to Boca Raton to deliver her first daughter in order to have a live interpreter... Read more: wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-beach-county/boynton-beach/hearing-impaired-pregnant-woman-sues-hospital-wants-interpreter