Florida Nursing Home Lawyer Blog
A case nursing home elopement ended tragically in Massachusetts recently, when a man who suffered a severe brain injury wandered away from a nursing home one Tuesday night. He was found dead the next day.
Local news outlets reported the 54-year-old was last seen at the nursing home around 7 p.m. the evening before. Having suffered a severe brain injury from a ruptured aneurysm which resulted in severe memory loss, as well as numerous other medical conditions, the man wasn’t necessarily considered high risk, the way some Alzheimer’s or dementia patients are. He wasn’t required to wear a monitoring bracelet. Staffers called police when they realized the man was missing, but told authorities they didn’t know if the building had surveillance cameras and weren’t sure how to access records to determine exactly when the exit doors had been opened. The evening before he disappeared, his brother had just helped him move from the ground floor into a newer room, reserved for patients with longer stays.
Although he was often confused, believing he still lived in his childhood hometown, doctors were hopeful that he would be able to regain a significant amount of his brain function. He had been in a coma for two months after the aneurysm ruptured back in October. However, much of the time recently, he’d been agitated and confused. It is believed he went missing some time between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Staff believed he may have simply walked out the front door of the main floor, possibly by following someone else out. The facility filed their missing persons report around 8:20 p.m. Continue reading →