Paraplegic patient locked out of facility all night: 'It was a traumatic experience'

The paraplegic patient who said he was locked outside a Jacksonville rehab center for hours told only Action News Jax that the experience still haunts him.

On Monday, we first told you that a nurse allegedly left the man outside for missing curfew by a few minutes.

“It was a traumatic experience,” J.W. Spates said.

Spates said he was out late that night drinking and fishing in a pond near his now-former rehab center.

He said he arrived four or five minutes after the midnight curfew, and the nurse made him spend the night outside.

“I was asking for cover, water, stuff like that. (The staff) wouldn’t give me anything,” Spates said.

The incident happened in March 2017.

Spates said staff at First Coast Health and Rehabilitation Center let him in the next day, seven hours later.

On Monday, Action News Jax told you the alleged incident led to nurse Latonda Risher being placed on probation.

On Thursday, we went by her listed address, but no one came to the door.

Later, however, she texted Action News Jax reporter Russell Colburn, saying she takes pride in her work and loves her patients and that there are "other levels" to this story.

Action News Jax also visited the facility and was quickly asked to leave.

A representative with the management company returned our call, and we asked if there is any surveillance video that corroborates Spates’ story, if it is policy to leave a patient outside if they don’t make it back by the midnight curfew and if any policies have changed.

Action News Jax will let you know what we find out.

Spates, who now lives in a different facility, is taking things one day at a time.

“It was a bad thing, and I still think about it, still have dreams about it now,” Spates said.

Cox Media Group