ST. LOUIS – According to news reports, a female, whose age is between 22 and 24, is in critical condition after falling from either a third-floor or fourth-floor window at Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital Dec. 12.
Officials are uncertain whether the victim, Krystal Coleman, was pushed or if she jumped. A witness to the incident, John Case, said Coleman landed on the concrete around 2 p.m. Case, who had driven a friend to the hospital, said he had taken photos of the fall on his cell phone. He tried to assist the woman who was bleeding but was still conscious.
Case added that hospital security took away his cell phone and deleted the photos he had taken, citing an invasion of privacy. He is trying to salvage the pictures from the phone’s “smart chip.”
East St. Louis police are investigating the matter. According to East St. Louis police detective Kenneth Berry, however, the police department had a difficult time getting into the hospital to begin its investigation, stating the hospital refused to give police access for a number of hours after the incident.
The police were told they needed to get subpoenas in order to search the premises. Police added that when a Post-Dispatcher contacted the hospital several minutes after the incident, hospital officials denied anyone falling out of a window.
Berry said police only found out about the incident after Coleman’s father contacted them the following day on Dec. 13 explaining the situation. According to Berry, the East St. Louis Police Department was appalled the hospital did not contact them when the woman fell out of the window.
Instead, on the evening on Dec. 13, investigators were allowed to see Coleman. When they arrived, the window from which the victim fell was not broken, leaving police to wonder whether it had been replaced or repaired.
Representatives from Kenneth Hall said Coleman was being treated in the part of the hospital rented by a separate medical organization, and therefore, under privacy laws, officials could not release any information about the accident.
