Sascha Wil­son

The wid­ow of a pa­tient, whose naked, bruised and bit­ten body was found in a drain the day af­ter he walked out of San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, has filed a neg­li­gence law­suit against the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA).Lyris Lea­cock, the wid­ow of Ken­neth Lea­cock, 81, ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion when her at­tor­ney Rekha Ramjit & As­so­ciate filed a law­suit on her be­half, in the San Fer­nan­do High Court.

The wid­ow is blam­ing neg­li­gence on the part of the hos­pi­tal staff for her hus­band's death.She is con­tend­ing the SWRHA breached its du­ty to en­sure that her hus­band was safe and prop­er­ly su­per­vised and mon­i­tored.Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Lea­cock was ad­mit­ted to Ward 12 of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on April 22, 2009, via re­fer­ral from the Princes Town Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal.He was suf­fer­ing from hy­po­gly­caemic com­pli­ca­tions, re­sult­ing in his be­ing dizzy, weak and un­re­spon­sive.

He was not­ed to have a med­ical his­to­ry of hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes and prostate prob­lems.The court doc­u­ments stat­ed that be­tween 3 am and 7 am on May 2, 2009, "while the de­ceased was in the sole care and a pa­tient of the hos­pi­tal, in breach of the du­ty of care owed to him by the de­fen­dant to en­sure his safe­ty, the de­ceased was al­lowed to walk out of Ward 12 of the hos­pi­tal and leave."

The next day, around 8 am, Lea­cock's daugh­ter Fe­li­na Bap­tiste found her fa­ther's hos­pi­tal bed was neat­ly made up and he was not in it.When Bap­tiste asked a male nurse for her fa­ther, ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, she was ca­su­al­ly told: "He walked out of the hos­pi­tal last night."Bap­tiste made a miss­ing-per­son re­port at the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion and she and oth­er rel­a­tives searched un­suc­cess­ful­ly for him.

Around 11.45 pm that night (May 3) Bap­tiste went to the po­lice sta­tion on re­quest of the po­lice. The po­lice told her that a body fit­ting her fa­ther's de­scrip­tion had been found in a drain at Cipero Street, San Fer­nan­do.She was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary where she pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied the body as that of her fa­ther. An au­top­sy by pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov re­vealed the cause of death as hy­po­gly­caemic shock due to com­pli­ca­tions of dereg­u­lat­ed di­a­betes mel­li­tus.

In the law­suit, Lea­cock is claim­ing gen­er­al dam­ages, dam­ages un­der the Com­pen­sa­tion for In­juries Act, ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages and spe­cial dam­ages.