Home safe!
Celso Heredia, the 81-year-old man who went missing after walking out of the moribund Long Island College Hospital last week, was found safe at his home in Florida, police said Monday.
Celso Heredia was admitted to the hospital in mid-June after being discovered walking down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in a state of confusion with $300 in his pockets. He left the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, at the same time that many workers were marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the Cobble Hill institution’s impending closure.
Police in Fort Pierce, Fla., found Heredia safe in his home on Saturday night, according to reporting by The New York Times.
“There is certainly no shortage of staff at Long Island College Hospital,” Robert Bellafiore, a state spokesman said Friday, just before the elderly man’s discovery. Bellafiore would only speak about a hypothetical version of Heredia’s case because of patient privacy laws and would not comment on news of the lost patient’s safety.
Because fewer than a dozen patients are left in the hobbled healthcare facility, Bellafiore said, doctors and nurses are “tripping over each” other to treat those who remain.
Heredia’s disappearance followed revelations that the hospital had purchased the confused man both a plane and a bus ticket, according to Pix 11 News.
Reach reporter Jaime Lutz at jlutz@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-8310. Follow her on Twitter @jaime_lutz.
