Disneyland Employees Ignored Pleas to Help Hurt Man, Nurse Says

A nurse who came to the aid of a man after she saw him stabbed in Disneyland testified Thursday that several security guards and a park nurse ignored her repeated pleas for help.

Alice Sylvester, a visitor in the park, was left to care for the victim for 20 to 25 minutes before Disneyland personnel took charge, she said.

“I looked around for help,” Sylvester testified in Orange County Superior Court Thursday. “Some security guards did arrive on the scene, but they didn’t come forward.”

Sylvester, a licensed vocational nurse from San Diego, testified in a multimillion-dollar wrongful death lawsuit filed by the relatives of Mel C. Yorba, 19, of Riverside, who bled to death after he was stabbed in the park on March 7, 1981.

The lawsuit alleges that Disneyland failed to provide adequate security and emergency medical services, and therefore the park was responsible, in part, for Yorba’s death.

Disneyland has denied all the charges, claiming its emergency services were adequate.

Yorba died 30 minutes after the stabbing, according to the lawsuit.

“I kept asking, ‘Where is the ambulance, where are the paramedics? This man needs help,’ ” Sylvester testified in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Jerrold S. Oliver.

“Did they respond?” asked attorney John Luetto, representing Yorba’s parents and brother.

“Not at all. They didn’t say anything to me,” Sylvester said.

Sylvester also testified in the criminal trial of James O’Driscoll, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the stabbing and is now serving a 16-year-to-life sentence.

A fistfight had started after O’Driscoll claimed Yorba or a companion had touched his girlfriend. Shortly after the melee was broken up, O’Driscoll attacked again, this time stabbing Yorba with an 8 1/2-inch knife.

Walking off a ride in the Tomorrowland area of the park, Sylvester said, she noticed a scuffle between two men about 20 feet away.

As she watched, she saw a short man, whom she later identified as Yorba, stagger towards her with a widening stain of blood on the front of his shirt.

As she ran to help, Sylvester said, she saw the other man back up with a knife in his hand, then turn and run.

With her right arm around his back, the nurse testified, she helped Yorba to the ground. She removed his shirt and found heavy bleeding from one stab wound in the abdomen and what appeared to be a second stab wound in the chest.

She applied pressure to both wounds “with my bare hands,” Sylvester testified. Although the bleeding was profuse, Sylvester said, she had it “under control, at least for a while.”

“By that time there were four security guards, but they just stood around and watched,” Sylvester said.

The nurse said she spoke repeatedly with the dying man. “I kept reassuring him that help was on the way . . . a few minutes later, he started coughing blood.”

Going Into Shock

Sylvester said Yorba was going into shock, his eyes rolling back and his lips turning blue. He seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, she said, and it was 20 minutes before a park nurse arrived.

“There was a nurse that appeared on the scene, but she just stood there looking. She didn’t really assist,” Sylvester testified.

Richard E. McCain, an attorney for Disneyland, told jurors in opening statements Wednesday that Yorba’s death was a tragedy which Disneyland could not have prevented.

His cross examination of Sylvester was brief.

In other testimony, Rito Aguillera of Riverside, a park visitor who also came to Sylvester’s aid that night, confirmed Sylvester’s account of the lack of immediate medical assistance from park employees.

Interviewed after he testified, Aguillera said he was furious at the way park employees responded to the emergency. He said park officials did not ask his name but moved him away after a van arrived to take Yorba to a hospital.

“They just pushed me away. I was so full of blood I could have been the person who committed the murder, for all they knew,” Aguillera said.

One key point in the civil case was the decision by a Disneyland nurse to send Yorba to a hospital in a park van. Disneyland officials have said that was the quickest way to get the man to a hospital, but Luetto contends paramedics in an ambulance should have been called.

In their suit, Yorba’s stepfather and mother, Clarence and Ellen Reynolds, claim that Disneyland had a policy of not calling paramedics and ambulances onto park property.

The lawsuit, filed one month after the death, asks for $60 million in damages.