The mother of 36-year-old Latoya Griffith, who died along with her newborn at the New Amsterdam Regional Hospital on Wednesday, is alleging confusion and poor communication by medical staff in the hours leading up to her daughter’s death.
Griffith, a mother of three other children, had been scheduled for a cesarean section.
Speaking outside the hospital, Virginia Jones, Griffith’s mother, said she received a call from her daughter shortly before the surgery.
“When I was about to leave, she called, ‘Mommy,’” Jones recalled. “She said the nurse want to talk to me. The nurse said, okay, it’s a 50-50 case. They will have to take your daughter to [the] theatre. And when they come back in the afternoon, you gonna walk with some tea for her.”
Jones said she left believing her daughter would undergo the procedure and be in recovery later that day. Instead, she said, “I never know that was the last for my daughter because soon as I left there, things just got worse with my daughter.”
She recounted that some time later, she received another call indicating that Griffith urgently needed blood. When the family rushed back to the hospital, they were told that Latoya had to be transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
“It was so much confusion… mix up, mix up, mix up,” Jones said, describing what she felt were conflicting updates. “At the end, they say she have to go to town, yes. Then next they call back. Then they say, okay, it’s a case that she should have to go to town. When she go in, they say she pass.”
Jones said the family waited for hours to see Griffith’s body, hoping at least to view her remains and say goodbye.
“We sit down there, we wait, we wait, we wait,” she recounted. “We say we gonna see she but them wrap up my daughter. We sit down there waiting to see her. Not until they’re by the next door, they going away with her. They push her out, cover her up so we can’t see her.”
Both Griffith and her newborn died at the New Amsterdam Regional Hospital, leaving behind her three other children and a grieving family now demanding answers about what went wrong in what began as a planned cesarean delivery.
