she was attacked<\/a> by 44-year-old Racquel Haughton. The beating left Vann in critical condition for more than two weeks before she succumbed to her injuries. Officials ruled her death a homicide and Haughton was arrested and charged with manslaughter and assault in October, more than a month after the incident.<\/p>\nVann\u2019s relatives claim hospital staff failed to protect her from Haughton and were not forthcoming about why her condition deteriorated so gravely. The family is expected to announce Thursday they are filing a notice of claim against the city and its hospital agency as the first step in mounting a lawsuit, according to Rev. Kevin McCall, a spokesperson for Vann\u2019s loved ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would just tell me about her condition medically, but they didn’t tell me what was the reason for the head trauma,\u201d Vann\u2019s daughter Tanesha Vann previously told Gothamist. \u201cWhen I found out she was in emergency surgery, I was shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Elefterakis, the family\u2019s attorney, said he hopes the filing will get city officials\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe intend to litigate this matter and will use every tool at our disposal to uncover the truth about what occurred and the failures that led to Cynthia\u2019s tragic death,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody needs to answer for this,\u201d McCall said.<\/p>\n
New York City Health and Hospitals did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday. After Vann\u2019s death, a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement that Lincoln Hospital was \u201ccommitted to the safety of its patients, staff and visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haughton is being held at the Rikers Island jails and is due back Thursday in Bronx Criminal Court. Her lawyer was not immediately reachable for comment.<\/p>\n
McCall said Vann\u2019s family is struggling to cope with her death and the questions surrounding it.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a[Tanesha] went from speaking to her mother every day to not speaking to her \u2014 to attempting to dial a number and knowing that her mother’s not there,\u201d he said. \u201cHer son, he cries on and off. She asks him, \u2018What’s wrong?\u2019 And he just says, \u2018I miss my grandma.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of a woman beaten to death by her roommate at a Bronx public hospital plans to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-38185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}