The challenge is that both the 83-year-old assailant, Verne Gagne, and the 97-year-old victim, Helmut Gutmann, suffer from Alzheimer’s-related dementia. Not only can the disease dissolve memory, it also can make its victims agitated, anxious and aggressive.

According to family members, the two men had been in the lobby of Friendship Village nursing home’s memory loss unit near the nurse’s station when Gagne grabbed Gutmann and threw him to the floor. No one was present at the time and no one seems to know what caused the scuffle.

Family members said Gutmann didn’t remember how he hurt his hip, just that it hurt. He had surgery and was recovering until he stopped eating and died just shy of three weeks after the fall. The men had at least one other disagreement in the past, according to family members.

Gutmann’s family says they do not plan to press charges against Gagne but have questions as to the precautions the nursing home has in place to protect residents against such attacks. “It’s hard enough for people and families who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s. They shouldn’t also have to worry about physical vulnerabilities or the risk of harm,” says Gutmann’s daughter, Ruth Henning.

SOURCE: Nursing Home Abuse › Nursing home resident, wrestler not likely to face charges in death case

Many nursing homes who care for patients with Alzheimer’s have practices in place to ensure patients who wander stay within the nursing home wing where they live. But few practices are foolproof.

Late last month, King wandered from his nursing home. That evening around 8 p.m., staff noticed he was missing and notified police. After hours of searching for the 73-year-old man, police got a report of a pedestrian hit and killed by a CSX train. It was King.

“This happens daily,” said Jane Marks with the West Virginia Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. “Unfortunately this situation was more dramatic and had a sad ending, but it does happen constantly.” Marks was quoted last month in The Charleston Gazette.

This morning, the newspaper reported that King’s children have now filed suit against Heartland of Charleston nursing home for wrongful death.

“George King Sr. could not care for himself or be allowed to walk outside the facility and the staff of the facility at Heartland of Charleston was aware of this fact,” the paper quotes the lawsuit.

The lawsuit contends that the staff of Heartland of Charleston failed to keep King secure and failed to utilize available resources to locate him. It also claims that staff did not immediately discover that King was missing nor did they properly use outdoor surveillance cameras to determine which direction he went when he left the nursing home. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages

SOURCE: Nursing Home Abuse › Man wanders from nursing home, killed by passing train