Family Demands Action After Woman Dies At Coney Island Hospital

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The family of a woman who died last month at a Brooklyn hospital is alleging medical malpractice and demanding a state investigation.

Jorge Matos believes his wife, 47-year-old Grisel Soto, died because her condition was misdiagnosed at Coney Island Hospital.

He claims his wife was mistreated from the moment paramedics came to their apartment.

"She started screaming on the bed, and she started crawling on the bed and at that time they got five EMTs, they take  her down, they strap her down like a freaking animal," Matos said.

Matons claims a nurse in the hospital emergency room insisted Soto had been smoking synthetic marijuana, but he said his wife of 23 years never did any drugs.

"I told her no she don't do any drugs," Matos told CBS2's Steve Langford. "And she kept on [saying], 'She has been smoking synthetic weed,' she kept on talking to the rest of the staff and they all started laughing about it."

A doctor came only after Soto went into cardiac arrest, Matos said.

"They locked us up in a room and they just basically left us there, they left her there to die," Matos said. "They called an ICU doctor, the ICU doctor said, 'I can't take her, she's not going to make it to the elevator.'"

Family attorneys question the quality of care.

"To let a woman die when she could've been saved is simply unacceptable in this city," attorney Sanford Rubenstein said. "This is a tragedy that never should have happened, clearly there's something wrong with the delivery of health services in our city hospitals. This must change."

"Basically, we're medically dealing with a situation with a woman who had signs and symptoms of an infection that went unrecognized, diagnosed," attorney Ira Newman said.

The medical examiner's office is looking into the possibility that Soto died of bacterial meningitis.

The hospital said Friday it is "committed to giving quality care to each one of our patients" but refused to comment further citing patient confidentiality.