A day in the death of Anonymous

Pittsburgh, PA - On April 17, 1999, as anti-abortion protesters watched, and two of them videotaped, an ambulance pulled up outside the Women’s Health Services. The following still-frames were taken from the two videotapes and captioned according to the words of the cameramen and other witnesses. The cameras are identified as numbers C1 and C2 and the still frames, though in proper sequense of time, may go between cameras. The date and time features on Camera 1 are correctly set; that feature on Camera 2 was not.

(C1)The ambulance arrives at Women’s Health Center at 10:22 a.m. on April 17, 1999 as anti-abortionists picket. (C2) A pro-abort escort walks quickly toward Camera 2 with a newspaper.

(C1) As the paramedics offload the stretcher, a pro-abort escort on the right can be seen holding up a newspaper in front of Camera 2 (right edge). (C2) The escort blocks Camera 2, the cameraman complains to police.

(C2) A police officer warns the escort away from the cameraman. (C1, C1, and C2)

At 10:38 a.m., paramedics emerge with a completely draped human figure in a reclining position on their stretcher. They are not hurried and the figure does not move or resist the jostling of the stretcher. No IV line, oxygen line, or other evidence of ongoing treatment are visible.

(C2 and C1) The stretcher is loaded into the back of the ambulance.

(C1) The interior of the ambulance can be seen and no one is “working on” the patient. (C2) The doors shut, the ambulance leaves without lights or siren. The ambulance stopped and waited at the light down the street.

Here are some comments from one of the witnesses that day:

We don’t know her age, color, place of residence, etc. She seemed to be alone.
“Wouldn’t her coat have been given to a person who had accompanied her, rather than thrown over her legs as it was? Our car was in a parking garage some distance from the mill, so we could not follow the ambulance. We searched the Pittsburgh death notices and found nothing. However, Pittsburgh is less than an hour away from parts of Ohio and West Virginia and many come here from those states and other Pennsylvania counties.
“We were told we need a subpoena to look at Allegheny County death records. We’re working on that.
“We have a friend who knows a woman who answers 911 calls. She insists there is no record of an ambulance being dispatched to Women’s Health Services (WHS) or anywhere in the vicinity that morning.
“It would be easy to bury this completely. There is a police commander named Gwen Elliott. She is in the Mayor’s cabinet, sits on the board of WHS, and owns the company that supplies guards to the local mills.
“Bigtime conflict of interest, but nobody would dare to cross her.
“The abortion worker came to the ambulance as the second door was being closed. She smiled brightly and asked that the doors be opened again so that she could retrieve a small plastic bag that must have been put into the ambulance with the stretcher. The bag was found, and she carried it back into the mill. It was about half the size of a plastic grocery bag. None of us recognized the worker. We had never seen her before.
“As you can see on the tape, when the doors were re-opened, the woman was still completely covered and nobody was taking care of her.
“There was no IV line. The oxygen had not been used.”

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