Celso Heredia was finally found after six weeks of being tagged as a missing person. His case though is different from other cases in which the police are still unable to fully explain what happened as the patient who couldn’t remember anything when they first found him can now remember everything.
The 81-year-old patient was reported missing by the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn last week. He was brought there by the police in June after receiving a 911 call from a driver who saw him walking along the side of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The police asked him his name and where he was going but said he couldn’t remember anything. He has an ID though saying he was from Fort Pierce, Fla., with a complete address but nobody from the area knew him.
Then last week, the hospital called the police reporting the patient was missing again. The police started searching for him and were relieved to have found the patient. However, they were surprised that he can now remember his name and where he lives. In fact, the police found him in his house on Saturday. This is really weird because the neighbors previously confirmed that they don’t know the man.
NYPD officer Sophia Tassy clarified that the patient was not a victim of any crime. Heredia went home by a bus on July 24 without informing the hospital. However, there were stories that the officials of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which owns LICH, bought Heredia a bus ticket and a plane ticket back to Florida as part of their move to get rid of the remaining patients of the hospital as reported by the New York Times.
Another witness also mentioned in the New York Times that there were security guards on all doors last week except for one which only a SUNY staff can use. Since the security guards in other doors didn’t see Heredia leaving the hospital, he might have used this door to exit. A spokesman for SUNY refused to comment on these allegations due to federal privacy laws.
Heredia was found in his Florida home after Sgt. David Cuti of the Fort Pierce police did a welfare check. He was with a woman who seemed to be living with him.
