Laura Lee Medley was making a regular career of filing claims against various Southern California entities complaining of violations of her rights as a wheelchair user under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Placed under arrest after police sniffed fraud, Medley leaped from her chair and led authorities on a brief chase which ended with her capture:
Medley’s claims in California against San Bernardino County, South Pasadena and Long Beach included one allegation that a bus dropped her off near what she called a non-ADA compliant roadway, causing her wheelchair to topple over.
Last year, South Pasadena settled Medley’s claim for almost $7,000.
Medley is also a fugitive with arrest warrants in Arizona for forgery and California for fraud.
(AP/KCRA, May 12; Sploid). For more on dubious handicapped activism, including the California scene where serial complainants abound, see our disabled-rights page.
4 Comments
I told this story to my mom, who is handicapped and works for the social security administration as a disability examiner. She not only was NOT surprised, but feels most disabled activists aren’t really disabled.
Haha! That’s a hilarious story.. I can just picture it transpiring in my mind! Cracks me up.
Aren’t you doing disservice to your readers by labelling her an activist? She was fraud, plain and simple. Did
she ever claim to be activist?
Your complaint, I think, is more suitably directed at the Associated Press, which described Medley as an “activist” in the second sentence of its story, as well as with the headline-writers of the linked news story. (Note the quotation marks around the title of this post).