After teen is shot, mom allegedly goes first to WebMD
After her 14-year-old son was shot, a mom goes to WebMD and searches "gunshot wounds" to try to solve the problem, police say. It is seven hours before she takes him to hospital.
Our lives tend to be defined by the decisions we make. And the ones we don't.
Please place yourself, therefore, into the hands and mind of someone whose 14-year-old son has just been shot. He has been shot by a friend playing with a gun.
What might be your first decision?
I fancy that, for many, the choice might be to take the boy to the nearest hospital. However, this was not the decision allegedly taken by Deborah Tagle of Santa Fe, Texas.
As KHOU-TV reports, she allegedly felt the most appropriate course of action was to go to WebMD. Her alleged interest was in discovering how to treat a gunshot wound, something with which hospitals surely have more experience.
Police, aided by in-house surveillance video, say that Tagle's son was shot once in the upper thigh with a high-caliber bullet.
The 14-year-old allegedly lay on the floor for several minutes and then -- at least according to police -- helped his mom with her Web search.
It might well be that the motivation was a desire to keep the shooting quiet.
However, some might find it odd that it was only after an alleged 7 hours that Tagle took her son to Mainland Medical Center in Texas City. Later, he was transferred to Hermann Hospital in Houston, where he is recovering.
A 24-year-old Pete Jesse Rodriguez has been charged with one count of injury to a child with intent to commit serious bodily injury.
Deborah Tagle was also arrested and charged with one count of injury to a child with intent to commit bodily injury, a third degree felony.
It's a natural tendency for healthcare to become more of an online activity. Some even refer to "virtual health care" as the new form of health monitoring.
Somehow, though, it's hard to imagine that a mother might choose online medicine to seek a "cure" when her son has been shot in the thigh.