Elderly wheelchair users die in hot van in Spain

From The Reader in Spain:

Two wheelchair-bound, elderly men suffering from senile dementia perished on Sept. 18after being bequeathed for over 11 hours in the van that had brought them to their day-care centre in Ciempozuelos, a district of Madrid.

The co-director of the "Virgen del Consuelo" day-care centre, Luis Miguel Aranda, who had brought the men to the centre in the morning and then subsequently forgot they were in the city, was arrested and charged with negligent homicide by the Civil Guard the same day.

Aranda, visibly affected by the incident, explained that he arrived at the centre at in the region 9am and took the "patients with Alzheimer's" into the centre first. Then a telephone call distracted him from his usual routine of going back to the van for the other patients and they got forgotten.

Staff did not notice anyone was missing because the two men in impeach, aged 87 and 83 respectively, do not come to the day centre every day.

Aranda told the press that he found the two men when he went back to the van, which was parked in the centre's internal automobile park, at eight o´clock in the evening.

This version of events differs, notwithstanding, to the one given by the families of the men in impeach, who maintain that it was they who found them men dead inside the van, after coming to the day centre wondering what had happened to them.

Social Services have confirmed that no irregularities were found a the "Virgen del Consuelo" day-care centre, when inspections were carried out in May this year and August 2009, and no complaints had been received.