By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio-Community activists groups including Black on Black Crime Inc, the Oppressed People's Nation, Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party and the Carl Stokes Brigade will picket at 1 pm tomorrow, May 19, in East Cleveland in front of the Cleveland Clinic's Stephanie Tubbs Jones Health Center,13944  Euclid Ave, over a 44 year-old innocent bystander killed by a bullet to the hip when she was looking out the window at a  gunfight on E. 95th St in Cleveland two months ago.

The contacts for the rally are Community Activist Art McKoy at 216-253-4070 and  Community Activist Judy Martin at 216-990-0679.

Elissa "Goldie" Hereford was taken to Metro-Health Hospital and later died, and activists say that the ambulance road right by Cleveland Clinic on E. 98th St  on Cleveland's east side and took her to Metro- Health, which is on the west side of the city.  The extra miles drive, they say,  contributed to or caused her death.

These same activists are also still upset because Cleveland Clinic closed Huron Hospital in East Cleveland last year, with its Level 1 trauma unit,  forcing poor and minority victims of trauma in East Cleveland and Cleveland's inner city neighborhoods to be taken additional miles to Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield or Metro-Health Hospital.

The Stephanie Tubbs Jones Health Center opened last year amid controversy and following community protests against the Cleveland Clinic and its officials over the closing of Huron Hospital. It does not have a trauma center and activists said that they are not picketing over the erection of that medical clinic.

"This is not about the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Health Center," said McKoy. "But it is about driving pass one hospital to go miles away to another to put patient's at risk, and they lied when they said that closing Huron Hospital would be okay."

Police arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with the homicide of Hereford. Three other people were taken into custody but were released pending further investigation, police said.

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