A fiercely devoted Florida mom was thrown in jail because she refused to leave her daughter’s bedside in the hospital — and she’s “not sorry that I made them take me out of there in handcuffs.”
Lynn Savage, 70, was taken into custody on trespassing charges after she wouldn’t comply with visiting hours while her daughter, Amber, was recovering from brain surgery at UF Health North in Jacksonville, news station WKRC reported.
“I could not in good conscience and good heart leave her bedside not knowing how she was going to make it through the night voluntarily,” Savage told the outlet.
Savage said she had been at the hospital that day since 6:30 a.m. acting as an interpreter for her daughter, who is non-verbal and paralyzed on her left side from a stroke.
At one point, a doctor asked Savage to come into her daughter’s room in the intensive care unit to help calm her down after her operation.
“As soon as I approached the bedside, she was fine,” Savage told the outlet.
But when visiting hours ended at 7 p.m., a nurse told Savage that she had to leave.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to leave. I want to stay here with my daughter. Can you call the doctor because the doctor is the one that wanted me here with her?'” she said.
“And [the nurse] said no, that they couldn’t do that. That COVID rules said that visiting hours were over at 7 and I had to leave.”
Security officers then came to the room and asked her to go.
“They were also very polite. They kept trying to get me to leave and I said, ‘I’m not leaving,’” Savage told the outlet.
After several hours of not giving in to officers’ pleas, Savage was taken to jail, where she spent roughly a day.
“It was just terrifying, but I would rather be there than know that I had walked away from my daughter,” Savage said.
“I stand by my actions 100%. I am not sorry that I made them take me out of there in handcuffs,” she added.
The hospital said in a statement that it was following protocol to ensure patients’ safety.
“Like health care organizations throughout the country, we have put policies in place to protect everyone from the COVID-19 virus, including patients, visitors and staff,” the statement to Action News Jax said.
“Information about visitation limitations are placed in areas visible to those entering our facilities,” it added.
