Family seeks ‘justice’ in nursing home death

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Anibal Calderon with his wife, Bertha, in a recent photo. Anibal Calderon died after being struck in the face by another resident on Feb. 12 at Oak Park Healthcare Center.

Updated: February 22, 2012 12:09PM

The family of a 80-year-old dementia patient who was beaten to death by another resident of an Oak Park nursing home has retained an attorney.

“Basically we’re talking about justice. So it doesn’t happen again,” Robert Calderon said Monday.

His father, Anibal Calderon, died hours after being struck in the face by another nursing home resident on Feb. 12 at Oak Park Healthcare Center. Police officials are treating the case as a homicide.

A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Public Health said officials were at the Oak Park facility all last week and that they expect to wrap up their on-site activities soon. A report on their finding will take at least another week.

Meanwhile, the family has hired Levin and Perconti law firm to help them sort through the facts of Anibal’s death, and likely file a lawsuit.

Attorney John Perconti called Calderon’s death “unnecessary” and pointed a finger at the management of Oak Park Healthcare Center.

“The nursing home had a duty to supervise and protect each and every resident in its facility,” said Perconti. “There was clearly a breech of that duty.”

Robert Calderon said he didn’t believe the nursing home’s version of the incident.

“They said it was ‘just an altercation,’” he said. “In my eyes, there was no altercation. He’s right-handed, and he couldn’t lift his arm up to feed himself. Since December, it’s been difficult for him to be himself.”

“I don’t think there’s a word for what I feel today, what my family feels today,” he said from his mother’s home in Romeoville.

His mother is having a difficult time.

“If it had happened naturally, I think it would be a lot easier (for her),” he said.

Calderon said when he placed his father in the nursing home three years ago he had asked a lot questions of the staff.

“I did go there,” Calderon said. “They said all the right things, showed me all the right things, promised everything you’d want to hear.”

But he realizes now there was no depth to their answers.

“I never even got past the surface of what I’ve gotten to today,” he said.

“The answers that I received back then was: you could trust them, they knew about the disease, they understood it.”

“When you find out what kind of facility it is, it’s shocking, it’s really shocking.”

He said his family had enough challenges without worrying about such basic concerns as personal safety.

“Dementia is a cruel disease as it is, and to have someone who doesn’t have their mind with them ...,” he said without finishing.

Oak Park Healthcare Center will have the opportunity to formally respond to any charges from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The owners have not responded to requests for interviews.