LONG BEACH, Calif. (KCBS/KCAL/CNN) – A 74-year-old California grandfather is dead after he was allegedly attacked by his hospital roommate.
Long Beach Police Department have a suspect in custody, but the victim’s grieving family wants to know how this tragedy happened.
Francisco Sanchez was in a coma after police say he was beaten by another patient at College Medical Center in California.
“How does something like that happen with a hospital full of doctors and nurses and stuff?” Brandise Tessema, the daughter of patient at the hospital said.
Sanchez’s son says his father was admitted into the hospital on Jan. 31 for a bladder infection. That same day, police say another patient sharing a room with Sanchez attacked him.
The beating was so bad that Sanchez’s son described a nurse finding his father on the floor bleeding to death.
Sanchez had to be taken to another hospital where he died, investigators say.
Tessema has taken her mother to College Medical Center and cannot imagine the family’s pain.
“She actually likes this hospital. I frown upon it in a way. It is sad to see something like that happen to somebody else and no one came to help,” she said.
Police could not say how hospital staff were alerted about the altercation and what caused it, but they did arrest 37-year-old Reginald Panthier.
Sanchez’s family says they just want to know why a simple hospital trip ended in such a tragedy.
College Medical Center is cooperating with police.
Hospital spokespeople are calling it a random attack and sending their deepest sympathies to the Sanchez family.
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