Questions Continue Swirling Over Esmin Green's Death

Esmin Green, the woman seen on the horrifying video at Kings County Hospital in her last moments as hospital workers ignore her condition and do not take action as they see her sprawled on the floor was lovingly and fondly remembered yesterday at her funeral as a hard working and loving mother who had suffered from mental problems in the past and may have had depression following the loss of a job and her apartment.

Esmin Green may have died alone and ignored on the floor of a busy Brooklyn hospital waiting room.

But her funeral Sunday at Jesus Is Lord Church in Canarsie, where she taught Sunday school, was packed to the rafters.

"She looks great. She looks beautiful," said church elder Compton Cuffy as he looked at Green, laid out in a white dress and white lace gloves in a blue casket.

A sign by Green's body said she was now "in God's care."

It was a poignant reminder of the care she did not receive during her last day on Earth.

Green, 49, a mother of six who moved to New York from Jamaica eight years ago, died June 19 after waiting more than 24 hours for help in the psychiatric ward of Kings County Hospital.

Security video showed her finally falling off her waiting room chair in convulsions.

While six people have been fired or suspended for failing to act, I'm more interested in knowing how and why records were falsified claiming that she was being properly cared for.

I think that investigators will find a horror show as they dig into the records. They may uncover rampant problems with records - that proper patient care was not a prerequisite, and that the mental health facilities at Kings County was anything but an environment where patients could receive care for their conditions. The NYCLU has been going after the hospital for failing to provide proper care for years, and this deadly incident may be the trigger to getting real reform implemented at the hospital.

New York Civil Liberties Union said last week that the hospital staff falsified Green's records to cover up the time Green went without assistance.

A federal investigation of the hospital was under way when the incident involving Green happened. The probe was sparked by abuse allegations at Kings County detailed in a May 2007 lawsuit filed by the NYCLU and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service, which alleged conditions at the facility are filthy.

Patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or on floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, and often go without basic hygiene such as showers, clean linens and clean clothes, the suit states.