HONOLULU (AP) – The widow and children of a man who went to a rural Hawaii health center with a sore throat in 2013 and ended up dead will receive a $4.2 million settlement from the federal government, the widow’s lawyer and health center executives said Wednesday.
Antonio Marrero, 32, went to the emergency room of Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, where a doctor determined he had an abscess in his tonsils and arranged for him to see an ear, nose and throat specialist, lawyer Richard Fried said.
Then the doctor decided to further evaluate him under sedation, but Marrero lost consciousness and died, Fried said.
Before sedating him, the doctor should have known Marrero weighed nearly 300 pounds, which would make it difficult to protect his airway, the lawsuit filed by Fried said. There was no anesthesiologist there, and the doctor gave Marrero too much of the sedative drug, Fried said.
At a news conference in Fried’s office to announce the settlement, Marrero’s wife, Rachel, recalled her shock when she was told that the father of her three young sons had died.