A 31-year-old social worker was stabbed to death inside Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital late last week, a tragic incident that some officials have criticized as “predictable and preventable.”
The violence broke out on Dec. 4 at around 1:30 p.m. in Ward 86 of the hospital, according to a news release from the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Office.
Hospital staff had requested security for a doctor who had received threats from a patient in the ward.
“While providing security for the doctor, our sheriff’s deputy heard a disturbance unfolding in the hallway involving the suspect, who was attacking a social worker,” SFCSO investigators said. “The deputy intervened immediately, restraining the suspect and securing the scene.”
During the attack, the victim, only identified as a University of California, San Francisco social worker, sustained multiple stab wounds to the neck and shoulders. Hospital staff began performing lifesaving measures, including CPR and rushed the 31-year-old to an operating room in critical condition.
The suspect, 34-year-old San Francisco resident Wilfredo Tortolero Arriechi, was subdued and taken into custody. A five-inch kitchen knife believed to have been used during the attack was recovered at the scene.
Arriechi was booked at the San Francisco County Jail for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, mayhem and being armed during the commission of a felony.
On Saturday, officials with the San Francisco Police Department reported that the victim had died, KTLA’s sister-station KRON reported.
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Officials with the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association released a statement two days after the attack criticizing the city’s decision to reduce the number of SFCSO deputies assigned to the hospital.
“This tragedy is exactly what deputies and staff warned would happen when the Department of Public Health cut deputy sheriff positions and shifted to a ‘response-only’ security model,” the statement read in part.
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Citing the hospital’s own data, the sheriff’s deputy union noted that there were on average “six physical assaults with injury each month” during the last year and urged department of health officials to increase the number of deputies assigned to the facility’s high-risk units.
“This was not a random, unforeseeable incident,” DSA President Ken Lomba said. “ZSFGH’s own data show years of serious assaults and weapons on campus. Deputies, nurses, and social workers told DPH that pulling deputies off high-risk units/posts and replacing them with unarmed cadets and distant response teams would get someone seriously hurt or killed. On December 4, that prediction came true.”
Health department officials on Saturday responded by saying steps to improve staff safety had been taken, including adding more security, working to get weapons detection systems installed and limiting access points for unauthorized personnel, SFGATE reported.
Sheriff’s Investigators said the department is maintaining security in Ward 86 and that while “hospital staff and patients were understandably shaken,” there was no ongoing threat to the public.
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