A disabled Florida woman claims Southwest Airlines employees refused to assist her in going down a jet bridge in a wheelchair — and that she suffered horrific injuries after falling over, court papers state.
The Broward County suit asserts that the 24-year-old woman, Gaby Assouline, who suffers from a muscle disease, was traveling from South Florida to Denver, Colorado in February when she asked for someone to push her wheelchair down the corridor.
According to the suit, a Southwest supervisor at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport declined the woman’s request. The disabled woman was then forced to negotiate the jet bridge on her own.
Assouline was then “thrown” from the wheelchair before landing on her head — and is now paralyzed from the neck down, the suit states.
A heartbreaking GoFundMe page set up for Assouline by her mother, Sandra Assouline, said that she cracked her vertebrae in the spill and is now forced to use a feeding tube.
“She can’t speak because she has a tube down her throat, and she has no movement below her neck,” the mom wrote on the page. “The fear and pain she is showing in her eyes when she wakes up in those brief moments of clarity is too much to bear.”
Assouline said her daughter suffers from a disorder that turns muscle tissue into bone, limiting her mobility when the condition flares.
The benefit drive has raised more than $112,000 in one week.
“Southwest Airlines’ primary priority is the safety of our people and customers both on the ground and in the air,” Southwest spokesman Chris Perry told the Dallas Morning News in a statement. “We have reviewed the customer’s initial account of her travel experience and have offered a response directly to those involved.”
The suit is demanding that Southwest pay for Assouline’s daunting medical care and compensate her for suffering.
“After the hospital, she will need to be moved to a live-in inpatient rehab facility where she will learn to live with her new reality,” her mother wrote. “Gaby will need occupational, speech, physical, psychological, and many other therapies in order to regain what she’s lost.”
