Medicine: Wrong Blood

The Johns Hopkins Hospital admitted a rare mistake. The admission came too late to help the patient, but it meant a considerable difference in the time a young tough named James Vencill was going to have to spend in prison.

Last December, in an argument with other Baltimore youths over a girl, Vencill, 17, stabbed Eugene ("Cotton") Botts, 18, in the belly with a paring knife. A week later, after two blood transfusions at Johns Hopkins, Botts died. A murder indictment was handed up against Vencill, charging him with "assaulting and stabbing and causing the death of" Eugene Botts. Meanwhile the hospital discovered that, although Botts's blood was Type O ("universal donor"), he had mistakenly been given blood of the rare Type AB. Revised finding of the city medical examiner: death was almost certainly due to a kidney block caused by the wrong blood.

In Baltimore's Youth Court last week, Judge Emory Niles dismissed the murder charge, sent Vencill to prison for five years for assault with intent to murder.