Patient who walked out of Med Center is found

by Ron Zeitlinger/The Jersey Journal
Friday November 07, 2008, 2:57 PM

The patient who walked out of the Jersey City Medical Center Wednesday morning has been found in good health, the man's sister said today.

Gerard Sutton, a psychiatric patient at another hospital who was at the JCMC for treatment of a heart ailment, was found this morning, his sister, Doreen Whigfall said this afternoon. Whigfall said the police brought him to the hospital, and thanked The Jersey Journal for an article that appeared in today's editions alerting the public that her brother was missing.

"I haven't talked to the police yet to find out how they found him," she said. "But I'm sure that article in the paper helped."

Whigfall said hospital called to notify her that her brother was back in their care, but "they didn't tell me who found him or where they found him."

Whigfall said her brother appeared OK, but did not say where he had spent the 40 hours since he walked out of the JCMC.

"I was just so relieved. I haven't slept. My pressure had been up," Whigfall said.

I wonder too how he walked out of the unit on the 6th floor. However please note that he was not on the Psych unit. He was on a regular medical floor.
I do hope they find him so he can receive the treatment he needs.

Psych patient bolts from Medical Center

Friday, November 07, 2008
By CHARLES HACK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

On Wednesday morning, a 46-year-old psychiatric patient unhooked himself from a heart monitor at the Jersey City Medical Center and left the building.

The Jersey City family of Gerard Sutton is worried for their loved one's safety and stunned that he was allowed to walk out of the hospital.

According to Sutton's sister, Doreen Wigfall, Sutton, a patient at Meadowview Psychiatric Hospital in Secaucus, was rushed to the Medical Center on Oct. 28 suffering from a chronic heart ailment.

A few days after leaving the intensive care unit, Sutton was eating breakfast in a ward on the sixth floor Wednesday when he removed his heart monitors and left the facility.

"We have been looking for him all night and we can't find him anywhere," Wigfall said. "He has been schizophrenic for years and on top of that he is physically sick. I don't want anything to happen to him."

"It boggles my mind how (a psychiatric patient) can just walk out of there," said Keith Sutton, the patient's brother.

John McKeegan, a spokesman for the Jersey City Medical Center, confirmed Sutton "left," but could not provide more details because of privacy regulations.

Sutton is about 5-foot 7, has mixed gray and black hair and a scraggly mustache, Wigfall said. He was wearing a red sweatshirt, a denim jacket and black pants before he left.

He is the youngest of six children, and had been living with his mother in the Arlington Gardens public housing complex until she died in 2000. After that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital as well as periods of homelessness until he was admitted to Meadowview, the family said.

Police ask that anyone with information call 201-547-5477.