Family launches complaint against hospital in case of missing man
Owen Rooney was last seen on Aug. 14,
sitting on a picnic table outside the hospital in Grand Forks, just
north of the Canada-United States border.
From there, the 24-year-old Australian
appears to have vanished, leaving behind an anguished family and a host
of unanswered questions.
This week, the RCMP is expected to release
a video that will retrace the young man's movements in the days leading
up to his disappearance, including his attendance at an outdoor music
festival and a physical altercation that had left him with two black
eyes before he checked into the hospital.
In the meantime, Mr. Rooney's family has
lodged a complaint with the Interior Health Authority in connection to
what the family sees as lax monitoring of an injured, possibly confused,
young man who left the hospital without being formally discharged.
"There's lots of questions about what the
hospital did and didn't do," Sharon Rooney, Mr. Rooney's mother, said
Sunday in a telephone interview from Grand Forks, where she and her
husband have been since a few days after their son disappeared.
For Ms. Rooney, those questions include
why the hospital didn't do more to ensure Mr. Rooney contacted friends
or family before he left the facility.
"He was only two hours away from Kelowna,
where he was living and had friends and support network. I don't know
why they wouldn't have had a social worker come take him home," she
said.
Mr. Rooney had been in B.C. for months, first working at the Big White ski resort and more recently at a Kelowna pub.
In the days before he disappeared, he
attended the Shambhala music festival, an outdoor extravaganza near the
town of Salmo that draws 10,000 people and features dozens of
performers.
At that festival, friends have told Ms. Rooney, he took some illicit drugs that made him restless and paranoid.
After the festival, he is believed to have
spent time in Nelson, Castlegar and Christina Lake, a resort town
where, at some point, he got involved in a physical altercation.
He was picked up by police and taken to
Grand Forks, where he checked into the hospital. He departed the next
day, leaving his backpack and phone - which was not working - behind.
The Interior Health Authority said it is
looking into the family's complaint but that it is unable to discuss
specifics of Mr. Rooney's care because of privacy concerns.
In a statement, Kootenay Boundary acute
care director Ingrid Hampf said Mr. Rooney was kept overnight for
observation and that staff contacted RCMP on the day he left the
hospital "as his belongings were left behind, and that is unusual."
Patients at the hospital are not restricted to their rooms, she added.
"They can go outside or to the cafeteria;
they can leave the property," Ms. Hampf said. "Owen did go outside a
number of times on that summer day and did come back inside. While we
can recommend a patient stay at our site for observation, we can't
prevent a patient from leaving our facility - at times patients do leave
prior to discharge; while not preferred, they are free to do so. There
are only exceptional circumstances where the hospital and physicians can
intervene, and that is, for example, if a patient has been committed
under the Mental Health Act. That was not the case here."
The hospital would also provide ways for
patients to contact family and "would also ask patients if they want us
to contact someone for them and do so whenever possible."
The police video is expected to include
information about Mr. Rooney's appearance, including an Australian-made
logo - a stylized kangaroo - on his right calf.
In the meantime, his parents and two
sisters, who were travelling elsewhere in B.C. when Mr. Rooney vanished,
have no plans to return to Australia. Records obtained from his mobile
phone show that he was sending text messages to a young woman who lived
in Alberta, raising the possibility in the family's mind that Mr. Rooney
might have been on his way east.
"The four of us are in the same mind -
that we really have to find him," Ms. Rooney said. "In whatever form
that happens. We have to find him."
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