Wendy Williams Removed from Assisted Living Facility by NYPD, Taken to Hospital in Ambulance
Wendy Williams was unexpectedly taken to the hospital amid her pleas for help.
Authorities responded to Williams' assisted living facility for a welfare check on Monday, March 10, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department confirmed to PEOPLE. She was then escorted out of the building, and EMS transported her in an ambulance to a local hospital 'for evaluation.'
According to reporting from The New York Post, the 60-year-old former talk show host dropped a note out of her window earlier that morning. It allegedly read: 'Help! Wendy!!'
Related: Wendy Williams Says She's 'Not Incapacitated' from Dementia as Her Guardian Requests a 'New Medical Evaluation': Docs
Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Williams has been living under a legal guardianship that oversees both her finances and health since May 2022. In recent months, she has been in an ongoing legal battle to end her conservatorship with her court-appointed guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, who claims Williams is "cognitively impaired, permanently disabled and legally incapacitated.'
"I am not cognitively impaired but I feel like I am in prison," Williams said on The Breakfast Club in January. "I'm in this place with people who are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s. .... These people, there's something wrong with these people here on this floor. I am clearly not."
She added that elevators in the facility — which she called a "prison" — are locked and visitors are restricted, and she is unable to come and go as she pleases. She also alleged that she is unaware of what medications the facility is administering to her.
Hours after her appearance on the radio show, Morrissey requested a 'new medical evaluation," per a court filing obtained by PEOPLE.
She also revealed in a TubiTV documentary called TMZ Presents: Saving Wendy Williams, which was released in February, that she couldn't remember the last time she was seen by a medical professional after her 2023 dementia diagnosis.
'[It has been] a long while,' Williams said, insisting that she 'couldn't' even estimate a general time frame.
'I was in Connecticut for a year and I didn't go see anybody. I've been in here for six or seven months and I haven't seen anybody,' she claimed.
Related: Wendy Williams Arrives in Miami for Dad's Birthday After Claiming She May Not Be Allowed to Visit in Emotional Interview
That same month, Williams offered an update on her status during a segment on NewsNation's Banfield.
'Well, I don't have the freedom to do virtually anything," she said. "As far as where I am, I'm on the fifth floor. They call it 'the memory unit,' so it's for people who don't remember anything."
"I've met the people who live here and I've been here for almost a year now, and this is very suffocating," she continued.
Read the original article on People
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Epoch Times
an hour ago
- Epoch Times
The Best Father's Day Gift
After the nurse took my blood pressure and left the room, I waited alone for the arrival of my physician. At my age, this particular moment of an annual physical can bring some long thoughts. What if this was the visit where my doctor said, 'Well, Jeff, I'm afraid I have some bad news'? I began planning how I would tell my children and friends of my impending demise. As I paced the small room, I stopped by the magazine rack, where there were several copies of 'People' and even a 'New England Journal of Medicine.' There was also a Bible. As I opened it, my finger fell on Proverbs 17:6: 'Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.'


Time Magazine
7 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure
Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported what they are calling the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple that had been trying to start a family for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible due to an advance developed by the Columbia team, led by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in the ejaculate. Male factors account for about 40% of infertility in the U.S., and azoospermia is responsible for about 10% of those cases. Until recently, there was little doctors could do to address the lack of sperm needed to fertilize an egg, other than using donor sperm. While to the naked eye, a sperm sample from a man with azoospermia might look normal, the microscope tells a different story, Williams says. Highly trained technicians rarely find any sperm in these samples, which are often filled with other debris. Add to that the fact that sperm are the smallest cell in the body, and it's not surprising that even the best fertility technicians rarely find sperm in azoospermia samples. That's where AI comes in. Williams and his team spent five years developing a system that combined an AI algorithm for detecting sperm with a fluidic chip that passed the semen sample through a tiny tubule on a plastic chip. If the AI picked up sperm, that tiny portion of semen would be directed to a separate tubule and collected. The few sperm isolated in this way could then be stored, frozen, or used to fertilize an egg. Called STAR, for Sperm Track and Recovery, the system was inspired by similar approaches that astrophysicists use to enlist AI to detect new stars and planets. 'If you can look into a sky that's filled with billions of stars and try to find a new one, or the birth of a new star, then maybe we can use that same approach to look through billions of cells and try to find that one specific one we are looking for,' says Williams. In this case, STAR is trained to pick up 'really, really, really rare sperm,' he says. 'I liken it to finding a needle hidden within a thousand haystacks. But it can do that in a couple of hours—and so gently that the sperm that we recover can be used to fertilize an egg.' STAR is distinct from AI systems that have been developed to scan and detect specific features, Williams says, because it combines that analysis with the ability to also actively isolate the target in question—in this case, any sperm found in a semen sample. The system can scan eight million images in about an hour, and Williams remembers the moment when he was convinced that STAR could become a powerful tool for treating certain forms of infertility. 'To test the system, before we discarded samples where embryologists could not find any sperm, we decided to run those samples through the system. The embryologists really worked hard to find sperm, since they didn't want to be outshone by a machine. In one of the samples they analyzed for two days and found no sperm, STAR found 44 in an hour.' Rosie and her husband became the first couple to get pregnant using STAR in March 2025. The couple spent nearly 19 years trying to get pregnant, and Rosie—who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy—says their Orthodox Jewish faith kept them hopeful during 15 unsuccessful IVF cycles. Prior to the pregnancy, they had explored multiple options to address her husband's azoospermia, including surgery and enlisting an expert from overseas to manually analyze and isolate sperm from his samples. They also researched efforts to extract sperm that were more controversial because they involved using chemicals that could potentially be detrimental to the quality of sperm. 'There really was nothing else out there,' says Rosie, 38, of their options before learning about STAR. 'Especially because I am running quite a few years ahead of where we should be [for fertility]. I'm not that old, but in fertility years—egg-wise—I was reaching my end.' They were introduced to Williams and his fertility program through a community group and learned everything they could about the system. 'We knew exactly what it was, and knew what they were trying to do,' says Rosie. 'If they could get sperm in a more natural way without chemicals and hopefully chose the good ones—if the program was able to do that, we knew we had a better chance.' For the couple, using STAR did not require any additional testing or procedures; their successful cycle in March proceeded no differently than any of the other IVF cycles they had experienced. 'We were keeping our hopes to a minimum after so many disappointments,' says Rosie. 'We came in, did what we had to do for the cycle, knowing there was probably a very small chance of anything happening. Why should this be any different from every other time?' Usually in an IVF cycle, there are far more sperm than eggs, says Williams, but in cases of azoospermia, the opposite is true. So to ensure that a couple has the best chance of a pregnancy, Williams and his team collect several batches of sperm using STAR and freeze them. Then they coordinate the mother-to-be's ovulation cycle on IVF, and on the day they retrieve her eggs, they collect a fresh semen sample, run it through STAR, and use any sperm collected to fertilize any available eggs. The frozen sperm serve as backup in case no fresh sperm can be found. Within two hours after collecting her husband's sperm that March, they learned that Rosie's eggs had been successfully fertilized and were ready to be transferred to her uterus. 'After the transfer, it took me two days to believe I was actually pregnant,' says Rosie. Now four months along, Rosie is receiving standard obstetric care, and all indications are that her pregnancy is proceeding well. 'I still wake up in the morning and can't believe if this is true or not,' she says. 'And I still don't believe [I'm pregnant] until I see the scans.' Williams says azoospermia is only one of many infertility issues that AI could address. 'There are things going on that we are blind to right now. But with the introduction of AI, we are being shown what those things are. The dream is to develop technologies so that those who are told 'you have no chance of being able to have a child' can now go on to have healthy children.'
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
In this rural Idaho county, paramedics are being trained to help with mental health crises
Just an hour after taking her first call as part of a new community paramedic program, Ashley Lynn reflects on the gaps it can fill in rural Washington County. (Kyle Pfannenstiel/Idaho Capital Sun) WEISER — In late May, Ashley Lynn responded to her first call. She drove over to the local sheriff's office, helped a man call 988 — the Idaho crisis and suicide hotline — and stayed with him until more help arrived. A paramedic for 20 years, Lynn is leading a new program in rural Washington County that's meant to help steer people experiencing mental health issues or searching for help for others toward the best resources. And, hopefully, free up resources for ambulances and law enforcement. 'The two worst places for someone in crisis to go is the hospital and jail,' Lynn said, repeating what she'd heard in crisis intervention training. 'Currently, that's our only option.' Southwest District Health launched the Washington County community paramedic program this year — calling it the first of its kind. While it's in its early stages and might evolve, some other rural Idaho counties are already wondering how they can do something similar. 'My vision for this program is to be able to bypass those destinations' — jail and the hospital — and 'get someone right into whatever service is going to best serve their needs,' Lynn told the Idaho Capital Sun in an interview. So, 'they're not accruing emergency room or ambulance bills. They're not occupying a seat unnecessarily in the jail, and they're actually getting help and maybe changing the trajectory to where they can get better.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Idaho has a shortage of emergency medical services, or EMS, which is a largely volunteer workforce and isn't required to be funded by the state, Idaho Reports reported. For the past two decades, Weiser Ambulance District has worked with the same operational budget, Lynn said. Only one ambulance there is staffed with a paramedic daily. There is a backup crew, she said, but 'we don't have extra resources to go out and sit with someone who's experiencing a crisis.' 'Washington County has a really small, although very professional and amazing, team of EMS folks,' said Wendy Young, who manages the federal grant funding the community paramedic program as a project coordinator at Southwest District Health. 'So when somebody is out on one call, that means the next person that's calling, the next person that's in crisis — whether it's a health care or a behavioral health crisis — they might not get the response time that they would appreciate,' she added. If you, or someone you care about, need help with thoughts about suicide or self harm, or emotional distress, mental health or substance abuse issues, trauma or abuse, you can contact the Idaho Crisis and Suicide Hotline at 988. The 988 number is available by text and call — 24/7, every day of the year. Online chats are also available at The hotline can also dispatch a mobile response team of behavioral health professionals for in-person support. Teams are available from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Mountain time, but will be expanded to 24/7 service on July 1, the Idaho Crisis and Suicide Hotline's website says. For now, the Washington County program is referral-based. Lynn's first call came from a local domestic violence-focused group. But as a paramedic, Lynn can pivot to people's needs on calls. She started by doing a basic medical screening and making sure the person was safe, she said. Then she called the crisis hotline, 988, and stayed until the mobile crisis team arrived. For calls, Lynn uses an unmarked, 'everyday looking' old county vehicle — not a full ambulance. 'Not every situation ends in transport or needing to go somewhere. But if we're able to stay with that person, deescalate the situation and hopefully resolve what's going on to some degree, and keep them where they're comfortable and safe,' she said. But paramedics on the behavioral health program crew aren't bound by the same time constraints as typical paramedics, who might need to head to another emergency call, she said. 'If we need to sit with someone for an hour, that's what we're able to do,' Lynn said. In EMS, burnout is high. But Lynn also hopes the program can show paramedics other career paths. 'My hope is that I can show that paramedics can do more than just cruise around in an ambulance and show up to bad calls and do paramedic things — that we have a lot to offer the health community,' she said. The program is funded by a five-year grant from the federal government agency called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said Young, with Southwest District Health. The grant funds 'need to be used to divert people away from 911 or higher levels of care such as emergency rooms when such diversion is appropriate,' she said. The grant is in its second year, with the first year largely spent on administrative tasks to set up the program. In other areas with community paramedic programs, local organizations, law enforcement and even hospitals sometimes pitch in funds. About an hour away in Ada County, the community paramedic program helps law enforcement, EMS and firefighters with calls. Last year, the program responded to nearly 1,200 calls for mental health crises, substance use or other needs, Ada County Paramedics Public Information Officer Ryan Larrondo told the Sun in an email. That work included steering people toward the community crisis center, inpatient psychiatric facilities and referrals to other resources. CONTACT US But the program also helps with patients' non-emergency needs, receiving nearly 200 referrals from local first responders last year for people who need health resources that aren't mental health related, he added. In Nampa, the police department is starting a program to send a social worker out to calls with a police officer — similar to programs in local law enforcement agencies in Ada County, like at the Boise Police Department. The hope is to reduce mental health holds and avoid arrests, said Nampa Police Department Deputy Chief Curt Shankel. 'Becuase that's really a no-win, right? They're not getting the help they need there long term,' he told the Sun in a phone interview. 'So we want to be able to divert that. And hopefully be in a place where we aren't getting law enforcement called as much to the same individuals, or getting to the point where we end up having to make an arrest.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE