- A man filmed a homeless woman having her legs amputated after she refused treatment for flesh-eating disease.
- In an earlier video, the woman said no as the man tried to take her to the hospital to get her condition checked and treated
- San Francisco’s homelessness and drug problems continue to skyrocket as officials fail to implement policies that effectively address both problems.
A homeless woman in San Francisco has been filmed having her legs amputated weeks after she refused treatment for a flesh-eating infection.
The woman who was captured on camera JJ Smith Revisited by the citizen journalist on the streets of San Francisco early last month as the disease he sought to treat took its toll.
Almost seven weeks ago on February 6, Smith filmed the shocking first clip of the woman refusing medical help for her injured leg.
In a heartbreaking follow-up posted on March 30, it appears the woman did not heed his advice as she appeared in a wheelchair with a stump.
‘Update on a post I made on Feb 6th I seriously tried to get this woman to the hospital for some kind of flesh eating infection on her leg but she decided not to go because she wanted to get high but here are the results. He lost both legs because he didn’t go,’ he wrote on Twitter.
In the comments section of the post, Smith continued: ‘He says he’s no longer in pain but he’s not ready to seek treatment for his drug addiction.’
The woman did not comment on taking the drug, and it is not clear what caused the disease to destroy her leg.
In the February video, the wild-eyed woman, who is seen foaming at the mouth, refuses the videographer’s offer to take her to the hospital to treat infections in both her legs.
‘Let me take you to the hospital,’ he says.
‘No, no, no,’ she replied, sitting down on a pile of dirty things.
‘Your leg will be cut off if you don’t fix it,’ said Smith.
‘I promise it will be fixed,’ she insisted.
No further details were shared about the cause of the woman’s illness.
But San Francisco is a notorious hot bed of homelessness, with many of those living on the streets battling serious illnesses often exacerbated by substance use.
Some people who injure their limbs do so as a result of Xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer approved for cattle and horses in the US, which is now flooding the illegal US drug market.
Drug dealers cut everything from cocaine to heroin with powerful sedatives — but especially fentanyl, which runs rampant on the streets of San Francisco.
Patients suffer damage to their blood vessels, resulting in gaping wounds. Some are unable to walk, or need amputations because the wounds are so severe, cutting to the bone.
Nurses described the lesions caused by Xylazine as if something was ‘eating your flesh from the inside’.
The number of homeless people in San Francisco rose to nearly 8,000 in February of last year, the second-highest number of any year since 2005, according to the official count, which occurs every three years.
It has almost certainly ballooned since the last count.
Some business owners around San Francisco have threatened to stop paying taxes if politicians don’t start cleaning up street trash, as well as human feces, and stop people from taking drugs openly.
Various liberal politicians and city leaders have attempted to implement numerous policies to curb the many problems arising from the growing homeless and drug-addicted population.
One specific harm reduction policy that failed was the opening of the Tenderloin Center last year, which was meant to help alleviate the city’s drug and homelessness crisis.
It cost taxpayers $22 million and was meant to be a ‘safe place’ for addicts to ‘get high without getting ripped off’ and without fear of fatal overdose.
Users were also directed to the help center, although during its first four months of operation, it referred only 18 of the more than 23,000 people who were welcomed to the site.
Overall less than one percent of visits ended in a ‘full linkage’ to the behavioral health program.
Despite their efforts, over 500 people died of overdoses in 2022 San Francisco. In 2021, this number was 641.
Officials hoped the site would provide a place to address the homeless crisis the city has faced in recent months and years.
Mayor Breed originally allocated just $10 million for the project but it quickly ballooned to more than double that estimate.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the center served about 400 people a day.
A large proportion of those who took advantage of the site used it specifically for shelter or food.
The homelessness crisis in SF is exacerbated by the ongoing fentanyl crisis. The synthetic drug enters the public drug stream, consuming a significant portion of the city’s homeless population and harming teenagers and others across the city.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid many times stronger than heroin, is often mixed with cocaine and other stimulants and unknowingly consumed by recreational drug users.
After the number of U.S. overdose deaths linked to synthetic opioids rose to 70,000 last year, public health officials continue to sound the alarm over the drug’s extremely potent nature.
Overdose deaths have skyrocketed over the past three years, increasing 50% from 52,000 in 2016 to 106,000 in 2021.
The White House blames most on fentanyl poisonings or overdoses and says the drug comes almost entirely from China via Mexico, with a handful of cartels responsible for bringing them across the border.
Six out of 10 counterfeit prescription pills tested by the DEA in 2022 contained fentanyl, and the ‘vast majority’ came from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
For years, the synthetic drug was used as a cheaper, more readily available alternative to heroin. Now though, it’s being cut with cocaine, MDMA, and even packaged in pills.
