OAP, 80, died after being ‘left paralysed’ following session with chiropractor to treat a sore leg
A RETIRED bank manager being treated by a chiropractor for a sore leg was left paralysed and later died, an inquest heard.
John Lawler, 80, suffered a traumatic back injury when his treatment table seemed to be dropped and raised “without warning”.
The dad of three yelled: “You are hurting me! You are hurting me!” He then moaned: “I can’t feel my arms.”
He was paralysed from the shoulders down and died in hospital the next day from breathing problems caused by a severe injury to his spinal cord.
The York inquest heard Mr Lawler, a former boss at Barclays Bank, collapsed during his third session with Dr Arleen Scholten.
Dr Scholten, 40, a director at Chiropractic 1st clinic in the city, was later arrested by police on suspicion of manslaughter. She has faced no criminal charges.
Wife Joan, 81, told how Mr Lawler had started screaming a few minutes into the 2017 session.
She said: “The doctor said, ‘Turn over John’, but there was no response.” Dr Scholten, a mum of three from Tollerton, North Yorks, then asked Mrs Lawler to help turn her husband over. But she said he was “a dead weight” and she could not.
The chiropractor allegedly then pulled Mr Lawler by the belt, twisted him around and heaved him into a chair where he lay “slumped like a rag doll”, his widow said.
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Mrs Lawler continued: “I tried to encourage him to move by saying, ‘Push with your arms, John’. But he wasn’t there.
“He wasn’t moving and he wasn’t speaking either.
“He wasn’t just sitting in the chair. He was splayed all over and he was a mess.” The inquest, set to last all week, continues.
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