Patient found dead after wandering away in triple-digit heat

Angie Wagner

Wednesday, June 16, 1999 | 10:10 a.m.

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Authorities are trying to determine what killed a 91-year-old Alzheimer's patient whose sunburned body was found several hours after she wandered away from a nursing home in triple-digit heat.

Workers at the North Las Vegas Care Center found the body of Margarete Sheets by a nearby storage shed Saturday evening.

Ms. Sheets apparently was able to leave the facility around 4 p.m. or a short time later through a door that was supposed to have an alarm on it, North Las Vegas Police Lt. Joe Forti said Wednesday.

Workers found Ms. Sheets about 7 p.m. She had collapsed by the shed on the facility's grounds.

Forti said the woman was severely sunburned. Temperatures on Saturday reached into the triple digits.

The Clark County coroner's office conducted an autopsy Wednesday, but a cause of death will not be released until investigators receive results from toxicology tests.

"The lady was outside for a length of time and her body was not in too good condition," said Jim Becvar, chief investigator for the coroner's office.

Forti said police determined the nursing home was not criminally negligent in the woman's death.

State regulators are also investigating the incident.

Several phone calls to the North Las Vegas Care Center were not returned Wednesday.

A similar incident occurred earlier this month in Phoenix when an 86-year-old Alzheimer's patient was left on a nursing home patio long enough to suffer a sunburn that killed her.

Mary Miles, a patient at the SunRise Thunderbird Care and Rehabilitation, died June 6 from burns she suffered May 18 to her feet, legs, arms and neck. Doctors had amputated her legs in trying to save her.