Boner Candidate #1: WE DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE.
As she lay dying in a Joliette, Que., hospital bed, an Atikamekw woman clicked her phone on and broadcast a Facebook Live video appearing to show her being insulted and sworn at by hospital staff. Joyce Echaquan’s death on Monday prompted an immediate outcry from her home community of Manawan, about 250 kilometres north of Montreal, and has spurred unusually quick and decisive action on the part of the provincial government. The mother of seven’s death will be the subject of a coroner’s inquiry and an administrative probe, the Quebec government said today. And a nurse who was involved in her treatment has been dismissed. But that dismissal doesn’t ease the pain of Echaquan’s husband, Carol Dubé, whose voice trembled with emotion as he told Radio-Canada his wife went to the hospital with a stomach ache on Saturday and “two days later, she died.” Echaquan’s relatives told Radio-Canada she had a history of heart problems and felt she was being given too much morphine. In the video viewed by CBC News, the 37-year-old is heard screaming in distress and repeatedly calling for help. Eventually, her video picks up the voices of staff members. One hospital staff member tells her, “You’re stupid as hell.” Another is heard saying Echaquan made bad life choices and asking her what her children would say if they saw her in that state. Dubé said it’s clear hospital staff were degrading his wife and he doesn’t understand how something like this could happen in 2020.
Boner Candidate #2: DOING THE LORDS WORK
A child abuse investigation involving a pastor in central Arkansas led to drug charges after police discovered he was using meth at church with his parishioners, according to court filings. Lloyd Eddie Lasker Jr., 49, was charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a gun by a convicted felon after police found him at a gas station in Mayflower on Sept. 22 with meth, the Conway Police Department said in an affidavit filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court. Mayflower is a town of less than 2,000 people about 30 minutes north of Little Rock, according to the latest U.S. Census records. The House of Refuge and Deliverance Ministries church, where Lasker is the pastor, is on a rural stretch of highway within the town’s city limits. Conway Police Detective Brittani Little was called to the church on Sept. 18 for a welfare check, an affidavit for a search warrant states. Little said she found an emaciated 21-month-old child “with multiple bruises from head to toe,” his mother and Lasker at the church. The child is now in the ICU “with a brain bleed and extreme malnourishment,” according to Little’s affidavit. Four days later, Little and Lt. Andrew Burningham of the Conway Police Department went in search of Lasker to ask him some questions about the child abuse case, a second affidavit supporting Lasker’s arrest states.
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