Nursing home death ruled accidental

Six jurors called to serve in a rare coroner’s inquest ruled Thursday that the unusual death of a 91-year-old Coeur d’Alene nursing home patient was accidental.

For the first time in 30 years, Kootenai County’s coroner summoned a jury to help him determine how someone had died. The jurors found that no criminal negligence was involved in the Jan. 11 death of Frederick K. Ramey at Coeur d’Alene’s Pinewood Care Center. Ramey was found floating facedown in a bathtub at the nursing home about 12:30 a.m. His head was reportedly trapped underwater by a hydraulic chair used to lift patients in and out of the tub.

Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said the coroner’s inquest is an option coroners can exercise in the case of an unattended death or if there are suspicious circumstances surrounding a death. During Thursday’s hearing, Douglas and Coroner Dr. Robert West questioned Ramey’s family and friends and nursing home employees.

Jurors were able to question the witnesses.

Douglas said West called for the inquest because “there were suspicious circumstances which the coroner needed cleared up.”

According to witness statements and police reports, nursing home employees didn’t immediately perform CPR on Ramey, who was found in a shower room in a different wing from his room.

Employees testified that they got Ramey unstuck from the chair lift, used the lift to pull him out of the tub, transferred him to a wheelchair and then wheeled him to his room and put him in his bed before they began suctioning water from his lungs.

Several employees said Thursday that they didn’t perform CPR because Ramey had a do-not-resuscitate order.

Witnesses were asked whether Ramey, who had been sick, would have been physically able to climb into the tub or operate the chair lift. A friend who visited Ramey the evening he died said he was too weak to dress himself.

According to those who spoke to Ramey the night he died, he was in good spirits. Some employees and a janitor testified that they saw Ramey walking in the halls of the nursing home around midnight, aided by his walker. He said he was just stretching his legs.

Nurse Anna Beggs said she peeked in Ramey’s room about 20 minutes after midnight and saw that he hadn’t returned. She said she looked in the halls and the dining room and asked other employees if they had seen him.

Employees were starting a room-to-room search when, around 12:30, nursing assistant Michelle Shoemaker said she noticed the shower room door was closed. Because showers are given to residents during the daytime shift, she said the door is usually open at night.

She went inside and found Ramey. Shoemaker and others working that night said Ramey appeared lifeless and had no pulse.

Ramey, who was recovering from a fractured pelvis, had a bathtub in his room, according to Thursday’s testimony, but was bathed in one of the shower rooms twice a week by a nursing assistant.

The woman assigned the responsibility of bathing the residents said she had always run the bath water and controlled the lift to get Ramey in and out of the tub. She wasn’t working at the time of Ramey’s death.

She testified that she had never seen a patient crawl into the tub by themselves or crawl out and didn’t know if Ramey was capable of getting into the tub on his own. The lift is typically left outside of the tub, is heavy and “can be tricky” to operate, she said.

Though the coroner’s inquest resulted in a ruling of accidental death, Douglas said, West is under no obligation to abide by their findings. He said West “can consider everything” in determining what cause of death will be listed on Ramey’s death certificate.