An elderly California dementia patient was reported missing from a hospital — and then found dead in its stairwell 10 days later.
Ruby Lee Anderson was being treated at San Francisco General Hospital when she disappeared on May 20, family members told KGO-TV.
The 76-year-old hadn’t gone very far as a hospital engineer found her body a few hundred feet away, in the stairwell of the hospital’s power plant building, on Wednesday. The area is supposedly not accessible to the public — and is not equipped with alarms or cameras.
“We’re very concerned that this happened,” said Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which runs the facility. “We don’t know how this woman gained access to the area where she was found, and we are absolutely looking into that.”
Two of Anderson’s children who spoke with the station said they are in “deep shock” over the incident.
The health department, San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and San Francisco Police Department are investigating.
This isn’t the first time a patient has gone missing at the hospital.
The body of Lynne Spalding was found on a rarely used exterior stairwell in October 2013, 17 days after she was reported missing from her hospital bed, according to the East Bay Times.
The sheriff’s department later acknowledged it had failed to conduct a thorough search for the 57-year-old patient.
Her family settled with the city for $3 million and the case sparked changes in security training and protocol at the hospital.
“It’s just something that should never have happened, but the fact that it happened twice is truly beyond the pale,” David Perry, a friend of Spalding’s, told KGO-TV.
“I can’t imagine what the family of this poor woman is going through. More to the point, what this poor woman went through. You go into a place of healing and you’re supposed to be safe,” he added.