Damaris Bustamante, whose siblings called her “Mimi,” was excited to be spending time with her friends that faithful day as they drove to the northeast park where she would collect river rocks to paint, one of her favorite hobbies. Little did anyone know that her last day alive would be August 15th, 2023. On her way to the park five days earlier, the car that Bustamante was in was hit head-on by a red truck that ran a red light. Although badly injured, Mimi and her friends survived the crash.
An ambulance transported Mimi to the nearest medical facility, the south-side University Medical Center of El Paso (UMC). She was complaining of pain all over her body, which was numb throughout recalls her father, Manuel Enrique Bustamante, the pastor at the Iglesia Cristiana Yo Soy. Bustamante recalls being angry that the clinic refused to perform a CT scan before releasing her about two hours after she arrived at the emergency room. The doctor told Bustamante that “it’s not necessary for me to do any CT scans,” because “she looks like she’s fine” the doctor said.
Within a few days her condition worsened recalls her father. When Mimi first arrived at the UMC-East facility a couple of days before, she had suffered trauma to her leg and complained about not being able to see out of her left eye. At home two days later, she was suffering from a high fever, was vomiting and her leg was blistered and purple. The ambulance her family had called rushed her to the UMC Northeast stand-alone emergency room.
Mimi arrived at the Northeast UMC ER with her heart racing at over 100 beats per minute, sweating profusely and breathing with difficulty. The doctor ordered medication and an IV to begin treating her symptoms. But the IV line was “not running well,” and the “critical” medications ordered by the doctor were not administered. Complicating matters was that the machine used to analyze Mimi’s blood at the clinic “was not functioning,” requiring that her blood be sent to the main UMC campus to be analyzed further delaying her treatment.
Because of Mimi’s deteriorating condition, medical staff manually analyzed her blood but found the results so abnormal “that the doctor questioned its accuracy.” Further compounding her treatment, the equipment to measure Mimi’s blood pressure was also “unreliable” during the crucial moment that Mimi’s worsening condition needed it the most.
The UMC northeast clinic lacked the necessary working equipment that Mimi needed to save her life.
At the UMC facility the doctors revived her several times after her blood pressure dropped and her heart had stopped pumping recalls her father. It appeared to observers that the medical staff attending her were unsure about how to treat her that at one point a nurse “screamed” at the doctor to transfer her to the main UMC facility so that they could save her life.
To her father, the doctor just looked “confused” after he implored them to take his daughter to the main UMC facility so that they could keep her alive. The doctor told him “she wouldn’t survive” the trip to the main UMC campus.
Finally, after many demands from her father and a nurse, the doctor relented and ordered Mimi to be taken to the main UMC facility. But it was too late and she died a few hours later.
Almost two years later, on October 24th, 2025, Mimi’s family filed a lawsuit against UMC and one of the doctors who saw her, Andrea Lynette White. The lawsuit alleges that White failed to diagnose and treat Mimi properly at the hospital. The lawsuit also alleges that UMC was negligent by improperly maintaining the medical equipment at the facility. As part of the lawsuit, Dr. Norman Means, an expert in medical care, reviewed Mimi’s medical records to see what went wrong with her medical treatment.
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Means found that the equipment at the UMC clinic was not functional and that the medical staff did not communicate important information to each other about the failed equipment as Mimi fought for her life.
In short, UMC failed to keep equipment necessary for a functioning emergency department at the clinic, including not ensuring that back up equipment was available for any equipment that fails during an emergency. Exacerbating the problems was that the medical staff continued to attempt to deliver medication to Mimi through an IV they had determined was “not running well.”
Satellite Emergency Rooms and Urgent Care Clinics
In 2020, UMC opened the first of two satellite emergency departments in the northeast, where Mimi was denied a CT scan three years later. The second satellite emergency room was opened on the east side of town. A highlight of the two satellite emergency rooms that UMC officials pointed out was that each of them would have CT scanners to provide “patients a higher level of care than found at smaller urgent care centers” in the city. UMC officials also said that the emergency room clinics would be staffed with “multi-skilled staff ready to provide immediate care.” Jacob Cintron, the CEO of UMC said in UMC’s The Pulse newsletter dated on February 18, 2026, that one of the things he is proud about UMC “is that we have the region’s latest and best equipment in the medical industry.”
UMC embarked on building freestanding emergency facilities as struggling out-of-town companies were filing for bankruptcy and abandoning El Paso. The El Paso Specialty Hospital owned by doctors, and a Nashville-based company closed in 2018 because of financial difficulties.
“Holding a facility out as an emergency department while failing to provide adequate functioning treatment-support and diagnostic equipment” is a “conscious disregard of an extreme degree of risk,” wrote Means in his April 7th, 2026, findings regarding Mimi’s medical care at UMC.
Last year, UMC announced it was opening its first urgent care center in May on the east side of town. Officials with UMC said that the new urgent care center, paid for with taxpayer funds, would provide El Pasoans with an alternative to emergency room visits. They also hoped that the urgent care center would relieve pressure at UMC’s East Emergency Department. The facility cost $1.6 million to build and equip.
According to the medical expert that reviewed the treatment of Mimi at the UMC facility, her death was caused “in a reasonable medical probability,” because of the “condition of the IV delivery system and monitoring equipment, and laboratory analyzer systems” that failed to work properly. The expert also blamed White’s failure to properly recognize the medical condition that Mimi faced and not properly providing medical care to her.
UMC maintains a policy of not responding to pending litigation.
Cintron, is paid an annual salary from taxpayer money of over $1 million after receiving a 99.95% score on his December 10, 2025, CEO Incentive Matrix. Although one of the metrics used in the evaluation included patient satisfaction, there was no general metric for quality of care or ensuring the UMC facilities had the proper functioning equipment in place. Instead of a quality-of-care metric, the evaluators scored Cintron’s job performance based on “expanded services” and delivering “record financial performance” to UMC, according to Board Chair, Dr. Kristina Mena.
Meanwhile, Mimi’s father recalls his daughter as a great singer who enjoyed leaving her brightly painted river rocks with inspirational messages around town to motivate the random El Pasoans that might find them.
This article is based on court records obtained by El Paso News.
Cover photograph credit: GoFundMe account for Damaris Bustamante.