Homeless woman dies from cold - Haaretz

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Thu., January 17, 2008 Shvat 10, 5768

Israel Time: 02:33 (EST+7)

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Homeless woman dies from cold

By Roni Singer-Heruti

A 50-year-old homeless woman died of cold Monday night, and her body was found under a bench in Bat Yam yesterday. This was the second time in three days that a homeless person froze to death in Bat Yam.

According to Alon Herlinger, a paramedic with the Magen David Adom ambulance service, a call came in at 7:10 A.M. yesterday "about a woman who was lying under a bench on [Independence] Boulevard, apparently lifeless.

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"So we went there. When we arrived, we saw a woman lying on the pavement, dead, and we could already identify signs of rigor mortis on her body. The rigor showed that several hours had elapsed between when she died and when we arrived. A man was sitting near her, and both appeared to be homeless. Bottles of alcohol were scattered around them."

A doctor who came with the ambulance was able to communicate with the man in Russian, and he said that he had tried to keep the woman warm during the night, since he saw she was suffering, but had not known how to summon help. The ambulance was finally summoned by a passerby on his way to work the next morning.

A medical examination concluded that the woman had died of hypothermia. She was wearing long clothing, but had only a single thin blanket over her clothes.

"A few hours earlier, we had been called to treat a homeless man found lying in another Bat Yam street," said Herlinger. "He was also suffering from hypothermia. We brought him to the hospital in moderate condition, but there is no doubt that had we arrived two hours later, he would have ended up just like the woman did."

In both cases, the victim had been drinking alcohol, Herlinger noted, and "the combination of heavy drinking with cold like this is a very bad combination."

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