Family Speaks Out After Hospital Patient Commits Suicide
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – The family of a mental health patient at UPMC McKeesport who killed herself is speaking out.
They want to know how, given her history, she was able to access the plastic bag she used to strangle herself.
Samantha Bokin killed herself just weeks after her 23rd birthday.
Her family says it never had to happen.
"She's supposed to be safe," her father Jack Bokin said. "We took her there to be safe and she's not safe."
According to police Samantha Bokin killed herself late last Wednesday night at the facility. They just confirmed that she was found in a fifth-floor room on the psychiatric floor – with a garbage bag on her head, on a floor that doesn't allow garbage bags – or any bags.
Sources say no one checked on her for two to four hours on a floor where patients are under constant watch.
"How'd she get the bag?" Jack Bokin asked. "Why didn't anybody check on her?"
Samantha had a long history at the facility, diagnosed with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. She'd been treated there five times in the last year.
She even previously tried to kill herself there.
Her family says she always had "room sitters" at her side, but not this time.
"That's my baby, that's our baby," her mother Pat Bokin said. "And I took her to a place to be safe, and she wasn't safe. She didn't get what she was supposed to be getting. So I'm very angry."
"She was just so loving, she just loved everybody," Bokin added, choking back tears.
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