An Army veteran who unsuccessfully sought shoulder surgery from a New York Veteran’s Affairs hospital for debilitating pain will instead find himself sentenced in federal court for breaking a $111 computer monitor in anger, according to court records.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office had initially charged Joey Edgbert, 59, with a misdemeanor count of assault on a nurse practitioner during a Nov. 23 office visit at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Syracuse. This count will be dropped when Edgbert pleads guilty to a misdemeanor charge of damaging government property at an unscheduled sentencing, court records show. His maximum sentence is one year in jail.
THOUSANDS OF VETERAN RECORD REQUESTS LANGUISH IN RED TAPE
VA hospitals have had a wretched history of negligence that was exposed in 2014, when thousands of veterans were found to have languished on an appointment waitlist that never called their names. Hundreds died. Whistleblowers to the agency’s dysfunction have been harassed, ordered to disregard subpoenas, and even subjected to threats of criminal charges.
Navy veteran Joseph Colon, who works at a VA hospital in Puerto Rico and is a frequent critic of the agency, decided to pay for his own insurance in order to get better care.
“I have gotten so frustrated with the VA about canceling my high blood pressure medications and taking days for somebody to answer me,” Colon told the Washington Examiner. “I believe one of the biggest problems at the VA is lack of compassion care from bureaucrats. I do not seek care at the VA due to my fears of retaliation.”
In Edgbert’s case, he injured his shoulder a year ago and then lost his job. This led to depression and suicidal thoughts, wrote his attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Randi Bianco, in a sentencing memorandum.
Edgbert was involuntarily placed in a psychiatric hospital for a month while still seeking surgery. He finally obtained a doctor’s appointment with the goal of getting cleared for surgery, but Edgbert’s medical records wrongly showed a blood clotting issue that kept him from getting scheduled, court documents said.
“Mr. Edgbert was suffering from chronic pain and depression because no one would help him,” Bianco said. “Mr. Edgbert lost his temper. He had spent months in pain trying to get this surgery and was now being told he could not have it because of a mistake logged in the hospital computer. That was the last straw.”
The nurse practitioner said he was kicked in the ankle by Edgbert, who then slammed a fist into the computer monitor. Edgbert disputes this, saying in a written statement that he never touched the nurse but rather slapped the monitor.
“I was already upset when I arrived for my appointment because I feel like I’ve been getting a runaround from the VA for the past 10 months,” he said. “The nurse practitioner said he would not clear me for the surgery and offered no explanation why … I struck the monitor harder than I intended.”
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Edgbert was not jailed for the incident, and it is unclear if his shoulder has been repaired.
