Staff at a spiritual healing retreat in the US waited two hours after a 24-year-old died before they called emergency services to ask them to pick up his body.
Joe Fitzpatrick stopped taking his Type 1 diabetes medication when he went to the retreat in Congress, Arizona, on July 20 after someone told him a spiritual healer could fix his illness, police said.
The next day his family received an anonymous call from somebody saying he had died, prompting them to call police, ABC News reports.
It took another two hours before a member of the spiritual group, called “Nothingness”, made an odd 911 call to report Mr Fitzpatrick’s death.
In the call a woman, who has not been identified, is heard asking the operator “Am I speaking with a living human being?” before going on to say her name is “Living Being”.
She then says a friend has passed away while visiting the group and asks for somebody to be sent to “pick up the body”.
When the operator asks if the woman would like to speak to a medical professional for help with CPR, the woman can be heard chuckling and saying “No — I really, I think it’s unnecessary”.
Medical staff have been unable to determine the cause of death.
When police went to investigate they said the people in the house, one man and three women, refused to provide their full legal names and referred to themselves only as “Living Beings”.
They said Mr Fitzpatrick had been looking ill when he visited but when they asked if he wanted to see a doctor he said no and instead asked to be excused from the group meeting.
When Mr Fitzpatrick failed to return they went looking for him and found him lying dead on the floor by a bedroom.
Nobody in the house called medical personnel for help at the time, according to police.
Detectives are investigating to see if anybody inside the home may have been involved in Mr Fitzpatrick’s death and the medical examiner’s report is still pending.
Sources: ABC 15, CBS5AZ
Author: Alys Francis. Approving editor: Nick Pearson.
