Death at Clarevue: Something Went Terribly Wrong Says Gov’t Chief of Staff

The government has said that the nation needs to know what happened to Lateefa George, the 27-year-old who died suddenly at the Clarevue Psychiatric Hospital last week.

Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister Lionel Max Hurst said today, Thursday, that something went wrong

“A twenty-year-old ought not just to die. The human body can last over 80 years, especially for women in Antigua and Barbuda. We know that something went wrong, he said

Hurst said once the autopsy is to be conducted, its findings will be made public

“The Antigua and Barbuda people deserve to know what went wrong and must be assured whatever went wrong won’t go wrong again,” he said

Norma George, the mother of George, said during an interview with Observer that her daughter had been struggling with bipolar depression since she was 19 years old

She said that in the days leading to her untimely death, she complained of feeling mentally unwell.

George said she checked her daughter into the Clarevue Hospital on September 4. She said she went to visit her child on October 30 and realized she was unresponsive

When I reached the women’s quarters, I saw three nurses sitting there. I asked them ‘where’s my daughter’ and they told me she was sleeping…when I saw the child, she was lifeless. She was slanted on the bed with a pillow behind her back and her two hands stretched on her side. I embraced her and I started to cry to her ‘Lateefa, Lateefa’…and she never responded,” the distraught mother said on Observer

She said the following day, she received a call that her daughter was at the hospital

“The doctor told me that the ambulance that brought her did not get anything from her. No pulse, nothing,” she said.

The family has been seeking legal advice on the matter and is expected to retain the services of a lawyer