Last August, a woman with Alzheimer’s disease was reported missing on the morning of Wednesday, August 24 from a nursing home in Bethlehem, PA. Police and volunteers began intensely searching the area that evening with the help of a police dog and a drone with a thermal camera. The next day, the search was scaled back and the Police asked the public for help in finding the woman who was last seen wearing green pants with a green and purple flower-print shirt.
Early on the morning of September 19, a woman was found dead in a roadside ditch just two miles from the nursing home that a woman had wandered away from on August 24. The coroner identified the dead woman as that very same woman. Police and family members have been searching for the woman for almost a month. The officials indicated that they do not consider her death suspicious; however, an autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.
When the woman was first noted to be missing, the facility reported that it “tested its security systems and reviewed its resident safety and security measures” to make sure they were operating correctly. On the fourth day, the facility’s corporate office offered a $10,000 reward to help find the missing woman.
The woman was known for her caring ways that were thought to be related to her lifelong work as a nurse. She was said to always be trying to help other residents by pushing their wheelchairs, even though she could not walk very well herself. The woman’s sister told police that she did not think her sister could get very far from the facility because she had a hard time walkingtwo miles is a long distance to go for someone with difficulty walking.
Is it enough to make sure security equipment is operational after someone has eloped? Or to offer rewards? More and more, incidents like this are reported in the news media concerning residents with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease eloping from nursing homesand many are not found until it is too late and they have died.
Perhaps there is a need for facilities to increase their efforts in proactively preventing elopement. We owe this to the at-risk individuals, their families and to ourselves.
