It began on on Sept. 7, with a car travelling at 5 miles per hour. At the wheel was 78-year-old Gabrielle Schaink with a suspended driver's licence. Subsequently, for not appearing in court for her driving with a suspended licence, Broward Sheriff's Office deputies arrested Gabrielle on Nov. 18.
Witnesses who saw the arrest were shocked. "Yes, they put her in handcuffs, and that's not correct. They should've helped her, but I was on the police force for many years, and that was the first time I saw something like that," Gilbert Lacroix said.
The 78-year-old has been diagnosed with suffering from dementia. As she sat in bond court, no one noticed her illness nor that her licence had been re-instated. Neither the judge nor the two public defenders realized there was a frail elderly woman before them. The two public defenders also failed to mention the BSO's recommendation that she should be released.
Without the $2,000 bond and confused by dementia Gabrielle, sat in jail for 15 days. Now, Gabrielle is in an assisted living facility. She said, "It was nothing, just a place to live like any other place. Have a nice day, goodbye."
Public defender Howard Finkelstein said it was not simply nothing. "What should have happened is somebody should have flagged this case. It could have been BSO, Broward Sheriff's Office pre-trial program. It should have been my public defenders that were in the courtroom, or it could have been the judge. If anybody would have looked up from their paperwork and seen the 78-year-old woman, this never would have happened, but everybody was so busy that nobody looked at what they were doing," Finkelstein said.
With another news video.
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