LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. (WSVN) — A Palm Beach County hospital is once again the site of controversy when an altercation erupts between a patient and staff only weeks after a nurse was hospitalized. According to reports, neither of the patients involved in those controversies was supposed to be there.
“I need PBSO to come to the third floor on a Baker Act trying to leave,” one caller said.
“We’re trying to get him back in his room right now. He’s a Baker Act; he’s fighting our staff now,” said another caller.
“Any weapons?” asked a dispatcher.
“No weapons.”
Staff struggled to contain a violent psychiatric patient trying to escape the facility.
“They just closed him in the room,” said a caller. “There’s security trying to hold him down, and they closed the door. There are other patients.”
One nurse described the intense effort to keep the agitated patient calm and not running down the stairwell.
“But now there’s, you know, we have six staff members standing around him trying to deescalate this,” she said.
According to the call log, six staff members attempted to contain the patient, including an unarmed private security guard.
“Trying to get in the elevator?” asked a nurse.
“Are you a guard?” said the patient. “Are you a security guard like him?”
The incident comes only a few weeks after Leela Lal, a nurse from HCA Palms West, was savagely beaten by Stephen Scantlebury, another Baker Act patient, on the same floor. After the crime, Scantlebury ran out onto the highway, claiming the nurses were trying to kill him.
Lal’s daughter, Cindy Joseph, says hearing about this latest incident is devastating.
“I was surprised, you know, he wasn’t even confined to his room,” she said. “He was in the hallway. You know, he not only puts the staff at risk but also other patients in other rooms, too. So I was really astounded that actually happened so close to my mom. I mean, she’s still recovering in the hospital right now; she hasn’t even been discharged anywhere.”
One attorney says enough is enough when it comes to hospital security.
“It’s a repeated pattern that’s just going to continue to happen until they step up and get the proper security in that hospital,” an attorney said. “Enough is enough.”
Due to patient privacy, HCA Palms West is currently unable to comment.
The state has now filed formal charges against Scantlebury for second-degree attempted murder.
