A 93-year-old nursing
home resident who was found outdoors on a frigid night earlier this week
is the subject of a police investigation, officials said Wednesday.
According to the nursing home’s administrator, the resident is in stable condition at the Hospital recovering from a fall Sunday morning outside the nursing home where he lived.
Police
investigators are trying to determine how the man made it outside and
then stayed there without anyone noticing. Officials are not certain
how long he was outside of the home. The administrator said the nursing home’s workers followed protocol and will not face disciplinary action.
The
nursing home, which has operated for 52 years, has security features in
place that include surveillance cameras, door alarms and a locked fence
around the building. According the facility Administrator this has never happened before. It is believed that the man unplugged his bed alarm and then went
through an emergency door which did not have an alarm.
A
nursing assistant making her normal rounds discovered that the resident was missing
and called police; the immediate concern was that he
might be outside in the cold. After
being dispatched to the nursing home on a missing-persons complaint,
police found the male resident on the ground near the back of the property. The man estimated that he was outside for 10 to 15 minutes but the police report said that based on the man’s condition “it was apparent that he had been lying on the ground for several hours.” For more, read the story.
__________________________________________________________
Robert W. Carter,
Jr. is a Virginia attorney whose law practice is dedicated to
protecting the rights of the victims of nursing home and assisted
living neglect and abuse in Richmond, Roanoke, Norfolk, Lynchburg,
Danville, Charlottesville, and across Virginia.
