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Man walks into downtown bar, ODs in men's room, is found dead several hours later

At 1:33 p.m. on June 14, police say, a man with a cane walked into the Green Dragon on Marshall Street. He proceded straight to the men's room in the rear of the bar - and then never came out, until after a bar employee, notified by a customer of a leg sticking out from a stall, called 911 and arriving EMTs determined he was dead.

The police account was based on several hours of video surveillance provided by the Green Dragon. At a Boston Licensing Board hearing this morning, a detective said the bar fully cooperated with an investigation and that he doubts there was anything bar workers could have done that would have prevented the man from doing what he did.

According to police, the videos shows a man who appears in full possession of his faculties walking into the bar, then into the men's room without ever interacting with any bar staff or patrons.

The man's body was sitting atop a toilet in a closed stall. Along with his body, police found evidence of an overdose: Two syringes and a bottle cap containing what appeared to be heroin residue.

Police say the video shows numerous patrons going into the men's room between the time the man entered it and the time police were called at 8:03 p.m. Police speculate that as the man's muscles relaxed from the effects of the heroin and then his death, his left leg slowly slipped under the stall door, which is what led one patron to notify the bar manager, who called 911.

Green Dragon manager Michael Carlisle and assistant manager Timothy Moody - who discovered the man's body - both said they had never seen the man before. Police detectives agreed with attorney Karen Simao that the man did nothing out of the ordinary before entering the men's room. Carlisle said the Green Dragon is a historic bar, a family bar, and that he would never condone drug use in the establishment. An A-1 detective said he had never seen or heard of problems in the bar.

Carlisle told the board that as a result of the incident, one employee per shift is now dedicated to hourly restroom checks. Moody said that includes checking stalls - and that a check is not finished until the employee sees whoever was in a stall at the time exiting the restroom. He added that doesn't mean a worker will stand in the restroom until toilets are flushed and somebody comes out, but that he should stay close to the restroom until somebody who was in a stall comes out of the restroom.

The board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take.

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Comments

What is this? High school? Look if an otherwise normal person is going to OD in your bathroom, an hourly check isn't going to solve the problem. Neither is wasting staff time with monitoring how long someone's taking in a stall. If they stop their heart with heroin, figuring it out 30 minutes later (on average if you're checking every hour) is too late to do anything anyways other than you being the one to discover it and not another patron.

There are lots of ways people could kill themselves in your bathroom quietly, with purpose or accidentally. It sucks, but there's little to nothing to do about it. But this is the kind of environment and decision making we engender when the licensing board blames every incident on the proprietor even if they have nothing to do with the incident.

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There's nothing the bar could have done. At all. This is a non starter issue.

And I agree, if this is what the board looks for licensing issues, we have a serious problem with how this works.

I was in the Macy's restroom (mens in the basement down a long corridor) and walked in on someone who OD'ed. Again nothing Macys could have done (although for weeks after they had a rent-a-cop standing near the entrance of the long hall way). Its just a known place for junkies to shoot up in DTX.

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I can guarantee you there is an attorney at $350-$500 per hour representing them at the hearing.

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Suspend their license to sell suit separates and accessories for a week.

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I think the real answer is to limit the amount of licenses to sell clothes in MA and have everyone in the community agree its ok for an establishment to get one of the coveted clothing licenses.

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This is the only way to protect us from turning in New York!

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That Macy's restroom is scary. It' SO out of the way down a long corridor where nobody seems to go. The funny thing is, right outside the restroom, in what almost seems to be the lobby of the restroom, is this forlorn little rack of greeting cards. Good luck to anyone trying to buy a greeting card in Macy's. I seem to remember that when the same building was Jordan Marsh there were restrooms that were much easier to get to.

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The end.

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NO! someone must be held responsible! We can't blame the poor bastard that went out and purchased strong narcotics of unknown strength and injected them into his body!

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About 80% of government services are good and important. In many cases I want more of them.

I want a bar to have to frequent food and health inspections -- and real punishments for failing them. I want to know the bar was constructed to a building code which makes it unlikely the place will burst into flames. But if a fire starts I'd be glad there was regulations regarding emergency exits and that Boston has one of the best fire departments.

I like the fact trash doesn't pile up in the streets (for the most part) and that there is safe and reliable public transportation. (For the most part. The T sucks but it could be a lot worst.) I like the fact a factory can't dump sewage into rivers and a steel mill can't open next door to me. I like the fact my tap water is clean, tastes great, and is extremely cheap.

Sure, with a libertarian government many of these things might be still be true but I have yet to see any evidence that it would be better then what we have now, particularly in dense urban areas. As stupid as the liquor laws are I'll take them to almost no regulations of any sort.

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The bar voluntarily took this action, and they must find it worth their while for PR and liability reasons. Not sure why everyone is up in arms.

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of course you can't prevent tragedies like this. But I think they are also upset that the body sat there for 6.5 hours

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Imagine, as a prank, I go in there and lock the stall door, then slide out from underneath. It might remain closed like that for 6.5 hours too unless a patron tells me that there's a problem in the bathroom. That's just the fundamental nature of it. Something like a supermarket might send someone in once an hour to tidy up and check everything is in order. But they have hundreds more people going through every day. A bar/restaurant doesn't need to have hourly check-ups on its bathroom. What's the risk? That a random person is going to die in there and not be found for hours? How often could that possibly happen? The risk is extremely low because the incident rate is extremely low. It's over planning.

You might be right that they are doing it out of their own reactionary attempt to "do something" about what happened in their bar. However, I bet it has more to do with the fact that by taking this "voluntary" action, they're hoping to head off any sort of wrong-headed decision by the licensing board to penalize them for someone dying in their business. And part of it is that it was a drug OD. If he'd died on the can of a heart attack, I doubt they'd institute a regular check of their bathroom or even end up in front of the licensing board (or if they did, even feel the least bit defensive about it).

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This is all the BPD's Licensed Premise Unit's fault!! Amirite guys?!

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Sounds like John Goodman's character from Inside Llewyn Davis movie...

:-(

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you mean to tell me - was seen walking in - with a stick - at 133pm!!!!!!!!! and

wasant found until 803pm???????????? 6 1/2 hours of people going in and out

some couldve seen him dead way before - 1 hr or 90 min maybe - no one cares -

say 2 hrs - ok - 333pm dead 3 1/2 hrs!!!!! their licence should be pulled due to

not caring - so just play - when no one cares - frank sinatra - 1957!

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Uh... you guys caught the part where the board hasn't meted out punishment, right? And the part about the hearing being mandatory after every death on the premises of an establishment that serves alcohol? And the part where everyone involved thinks there will be no consequences for the Green Dragon, and even the cops who responded to the call went to bat for them, because obviously?

I mean, sure, come back with pitchforks and a bathtub in which you can drown government if the board shuts them down for a week, but maybe we can hold off on the hysteria until that happens?

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My offense is that we've created a culture where pre-empting the board meeting by voluntarily instituting stupid policies as an attempt to look proactive for fear of being seen as needing a punishment to straighten you out on something that has nothing to do with you as an establishment is the norm.

Why be summonsed in front of the board for something like this given the evidence at hand? Why not have the board review something like this on its own time, quickly agree that this isn't the business's fault and mail them a letter not to request their attendance but to say "we got this one, don't worry" and move on? A little light reading by the board members pre-meeting, a few e-mails, and be done with it. But instead, since they have to appear, the bar can't go in and be like "whatever, we couldn't do anything about it and we're not going to change our ways over a dead druggie who walked in the door looking normal". Why? Because then the board might say "hey, wait a minute, you don't get it...someone *died* in your place!" and slap them down. However, they change policies, waste time and energy on this, and go in showing they've "taken steps" over this and the board gives them the right decision. A waste of everyone's time and some theater that they're going to "check the bathrooms frequently".

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he finally caught the green dragon.

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Am I the only person thinking of the movie Clerks with all this talk of finding the bodies of guys who have been dead for hours in public toilets?

(note, I do feel bad for the family of the deceased)

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May he rest in peace. Thanks for confirming your"Herald like"insensitivity to tragedy! I am use to the lack of comments of a person murdered in the inner city but this is refreshing and helps to make my point regarding heinous indifference for life, unless of course if its someone you know.

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