“Help me.”
That’s what Jody Pidgeon said repeatedly the afternoon he died. According to witness statements provided to police and video footage from his final hours, he said it while sitting in a wheelchair outside Rutland Regional Medical Center as hospital staff ordered him to leave the premises. The 60-year-old cancer patient then said it again moments later, after crashing his car into a snowbank while trying to drive away. And he said it yet again, as he lay on a stretcher back in the emergency department he’d been forcibly removed from, waiting for someone to try and save his life.
Barely two hours before he died on Feb. 10, 2025, Pidgeon had been all but dragged by police to his car in the hospital parking lot and warned not to return. After a two-day hospitalization, RRMC staff had concluded he was well enough to go home, and he signed discharge papers. Then he complained of vomiting, a nurse later told police. Hospital staff gave him nausea medication, but when he continued to delay his departure, they issued a no-trespassing order.
The nurse would tell a police detective investigating Pidgeon’s death that the troublesome patient’s problems were “behavioral,” and that he had been asking hospital staff to do things he could very well do himself. But even in the moment, certain observers were disturbed by the care Pidgeon received, that detective wrote in her report of the incident.
A security guard who witnessed his ejection from the hospital would tell that detective that Pidgeon had looked too ill to leave — and too unwell to drive. And in a sworn statement, an EMT who transported Pidgeon back to the ER after his crash said he had taken it upon himself to connect the patient to monitoring equipment, worried that emergency room staff would not come to the man’s aid.
Pidgeon, whose death is now the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit filed against RRMC, had first arrived at the hospital two days prior, after developing a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop — a common condition related to his leukemia. While there, according to the suit, he suffered from infections and periods of delirium. The complaint said hospital staff even encouraged him to enter hospice care, and urged him to sign a do-not-resuscitate order, which he did, although he later revoked it.
Michael Hanley, the White River Junction attorney representing Pidgeon’s wife, Jennifer Pidgeon, has been practicing medical malpractice law for close to 50 years. He called the case “very unusual.” Such lawsuits, he said, usually come about when care is delivered badly — not when it is refused outright.
The hospital staff’s behavior, Hanley said, was inexplicable.
“It makes no sense to issue a no trespass order while at roughly the same time giving a patient discharge instructions that say, ‘Come back to the (emergency department) tomorrow for an infusion related to your leukemia,’” he said.
In a statement, RRMC spokesperson Gerianne Smart said that the lawsuit contained “numerous inaccuracies,” but declined to say what they were.
“RRMC remains deeply committed to providing safe, high-quality, and compassionate care, and we take our responsibility to patients and their families very seriously,” she added.
After hospital staff wheeled Pidgeon out of the building, he tried to reenter, and around 2:30 p.m., the hospital called the Rutland City police.
Upon their arrival, three law enforcement officers would find Pidgeon slumped in a wheelchair outside the hospital entrance, barely speaking. When one officer asked hospital staff whether this was his “baseline,” a RRMC worker replied he simply didn’t want to go.
“He normally answers, but he’s just decided to go mute because he doesn’t want to leave,” the worker said, according to police body camera footage provided to Vermont Public by Hanley’s office.
One of the officers quickly grew frustrated, and, in a raised voice, started telling Pidgeon that he needed to stand up and leave — now.
“You got about five seconds, my friend,” she said. “Let’s go. Out of the chair.”
Pidgeon responded inaudibly, and officers forcibly pulled him out of the wheelchair. Pidgeon could be heard saying “Ow,” and “help me,” as they took him by the arms and walked him to his blue sedan, which was covered in snow.
As he unlocked this car, the same officer who raised her voice at Pidgeon minutes prior could be heard on camera openly mocking him. “Oh look at that, he knows what keys are!” she said, before offering a final warning: “Don’t come back here, you understand?”
In an interview, Rutland City interim police chief Matthew Prouty told Vermont Public the incident had been reviewed internally but that he could not disclose the outcome of a disciplinary matter. He noted that Rutland Regional routinely relied on his officers to eject patients who did not want to leave, and said police only had as much information at their disposal as the hospital would share.
Still, Prouty conceded that the incident could have been handled differently.
“I wasn't overly impressed, and we did address it,” he said.
Pidgeon sat in his car for several minutes after police left him there, and a hospital employee eventually came out to shovel the snow from his windshield. RRMC security footage provided by Hanley shows Pidgeon backing out, and immediately hitting the car parked next to him. Police records show he then drove his car into a snowy embankment — barely a block away.
An EMT who responded to the crash scene later told police Pidgeon exhibited signs of “profound shock,” including increased breathing and a hot torso. Pidgeon was transported back to the hospital, where, according to that EMT’s statement, a security guard complained the patient was “just having a behavioral issue.” The EMT said he told the charge nurse that Pidgeon was “very sick,” but described emergency room workers as slow to come to the patient’s aid. Worried, he said, that hospital staff wouldn’t do it, the EMT hooked Pidgeon up to monitoring equipment himself. Alarms immediately began to sound.
Eventually, an emergency room doctor would try to intubate Pidgeon, although by then it was too late.
Pidgeon was suffering from a host of conditions, according to his autopsy report, including RSV, hypertension and diabetes. A medical examiner concluded his leukemia — combined with a perforated bowl from an ingested toothpick — was ultimately the cause of his death.
