(The Dementia patient. Photo Credit: Sun Nigeria)
A dementia patient has been hospitalised after being b£aten severely by a fellow resident at a care home.
John, 87, who resides at a care facility in south-west Sydney, was allegedly assaulted on Wednesday night.
The att@ck was so severe that it left the elderly man’s appearance greatly altered, with grave injuries sustained.
Hospital images show the pensioner covered in blood and marked by extensive bruising.
Both of his eyes are swollen shut with severe trauma evident across his face and head, with a neck brace supporting him as blood reportedly leaked from his ear onto a pillow.
He was allegedly found seriously injured and covered in blood on the veranda outside his cottage within the facility’s secure dementia unit following the incident.
His daughter Margaret, who lives in Spain, said the family has been devastated and left in disbelief at what occurred.
She told a radio station that she had never witnessed anything of this nature before, describing the state in which her father was found as extremely severe.
She revealed the sequence of events when the family was first contacted, explaining that her mother received a call from night staff at 9:31pm informing them that John had been injured and required hospital treatment.
She said staff wanted to send him to hospital without waiting for family to arrive, but her 85-year-old mother insisted on reaching the facility first to accompany her husband in the ambulance.
Troubled by what she was hearing, Margaret said she immediately contacted the facility to get answers about what had happened to her father.
She explained that when she spoke with the night nurse, she asked directly what had occurred, but received an unclear response about staff having attempted to put her father to bed multiple times which was not what she had asked about.
She said the nurse then told her that her father had been discovered on the veranda outside his cottage, bloodied, as shown in the photographs.
The incident has left the family demanding answers as the elderly man continues to recover in hospital from the serious injuries he sustained.
The care home says an investigation is now underway to determine how John came to be assaulted without staff witnessing or hearing the incident.
