“The Hospital (Staff) Killed My Wife” – ZJ Bruce Lee Enraged At UHWI
Popular Zip FM disc jockey ZJ Bruce Lee has moved to secure legal representation in the wake of his wife, Alecia Hamilton’s untimely death while undergoing heart surgery at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) on Tuesday.
The popular radio disc jockey assigned the blame for her death to the UHWI in an emotional Instagram post to the hospital staff who, according to him, ignored his wife for over two hours while they waited for emergency assistance. He dubbed the situation a “nightmare”.
“They took my heart, my all, my everything….the hospital killed my wife,” an emotional Bruce Lee said. “The hospital staff ignored her for hours, those precious few hours were the difference between life and death, if they had done their jobs, maybe she would still be alive today.”
“Mi don’t even want to talk too much because mi ago buss out into tears. How mi ago explain this to our daughter now?” Lee cried.
His wife was 42 years old at the time of her death.
The disc jock, whose real name is Jermaine Bennett, said that his wife was feeling pain in her lower back, chest and abdomen and he rushed with her to the UHWI on Sunday. She became unresponsive in the car and he struggled to get her out of the car when he pulled up to the UHWI parking lot.
“Doctors walked past, people drove past, it wasn’t until paramedics pulled up and saw what happened and they assisted me with putting her in a wheel chair…about six of us had to lift her up to put her in the wheel chair. The first doctor I saw I told them she had an ‘aortic dissection’. I told them she nah respond, she is not breathing, they said ‘soon be with you’ and I waited and waited,” he said.
Two hours later, a frustrated Bruce Lee took out his phone and began to record the situation.
“They eventually moved her from the hallway into another area, and I continued to video it, repeatedly asking for some assistance. One nurse asked me ‘are you videotaping this?’, and then she closed the curtain. I posted the videos in frustration in Instagram and it was shared multiple times and that is when I got a call from the chief of the unit saying ”I don’t like those videos’. I told him I wouldn’t have had to post any videos if people just did their jobs,” an upset Bruce Lee said.
Eventually, the hospital staff ran a battery of diagnostic tests and prepped her for surgery, but she died on the operating table.
“I don’t even know when she died, no one called me. I went back to the hospital knowing that no surgery could last 24 hours only to hear that my wife was dead. Yet still when I got home, they found my number to call me about the hospital bill. These people are callous, if it s a public hospital, they should serve the public and do their jobs, but stop operating under false pretenses. Make it clear that UHWI is a private institution, don’t come in unless you can pay up front, don’t come in unless you are famous and know the right people or you will be ignored and ill-treated and left to die,” he said.
Bruce Lee said that the doctors found that his wife’s aorta had leaked fluid into her lungs causing it to collapse, and eventually leaked into her abdomen causing her extreme pain in her lower back and kidney pain.
Prior to his wife’s death, Lee showed a list with the estimated cost for his wife’s surgery and the care which came to a total of J$1,025,000 for hospital fees and equipment and another payment of US$3,700 (approximately J$568,000) for consumables. Lee disclosed that in 2017, they discovered that there was an issue with his wife’s heart when she was admitted in hospital for kidney-related issues.
“Maybe she would have died anyways, but if they had made a greater effort, I would have accepted it. Maybe then they could blame me saying that we waited too long to carry her, but this was not the case. We have lost empathy as a people, our humanity is no longer there and until it happens to you, till something like this comes to your door, you just won’t understand,” he said.