{Epilogue} Unplug at Barnabas

EPILOGUE

A daily patient report.

MORE THAN a year after her husband’s death, LaTanya Perry feels deeply frustrated, and increasingly doubtful that her husband’s death will ever be fully explained or that anyone will ever be held accountable. The police have all but stopped speaking to her. St. Barnabas seems to have been cleared by the Health Department.

“It was like they just did have no regard for his life at all,” she said.

Her remaining chance at what she wants — a full explanation and punishment if warranted — appears to rest with Alexander Dudelson, the lawyer also representing Shirell Powell.

This summer, a judge in the Bronx rejected St. Barnabas’ motion to dismiss Powell’s lawsuit. Dudelson is eager to start collecting more material in discovery.

No other Williams family member has joined Powell in the lawsuit. Most just want to put the episode behind them, and maybe recommit to helping Frederick straighten his life out.

Keshona, for one, can’t shake the upset, embarrassment and guilt.

She often feels ashamed for not having been able to identify the mistake — it was her closest sibling, after all.

“Stupid, literally stupid,” she said of how she can sometimes feel.

But she also feels somehow complicit in killing.

“I feel like I murdered someone’s family member,” she said.

Dudelson, of course, still represents LaTanya, as well.

In July, he filed a notice of claim on her behalf against the city of New York seeking $10 million. The claim, a simple filing without much legal detail, suggests that the Police Department’s initial assessment that Perry had likely overdosed on drugs had compromised the hospital’s ability to treat him for the injuries he’d suffered to his head in a possible attack.

It’s a long shot, Dudelson said, but he wanted to preserve LaTanya’s right to sue.

She is not particularly hopeful. But she does hold on to one satisfaction. She got her husband a proper burial. Because he was her spouse, and she’d served in the Army, Raheme Perry was entitled to a burial at a national cemetery. He was laid to rest at Calverton National on Long Island.

His headstone correctly identifies him as Raheme M. Perry.

Joe Sexton is a senior editor at ProPublica. Before coming to ProPublica in 2013, he had worked for 25 years as a reporter and editor at The New York Times.

Nate Schweber is a freelance reporter whose work has appeared most frequently in The New York Times.

Annie Waldman contributed to reporting.

Illustrations by Juan Bernabeu, special to ProPublica.

Design and production by Agnes Chang.

All pictures and commentary have been obtained and done by adamfoxie blog Int.