A fatality inquiry into the death of a 68-year-old woman who froze to death after going missing from Alberta Hospital more than two years got underway Wednesday.
Lorraine Adolph, who suffered from schizophrenia, went missing from the geriatric unit of the Alberta Hospital on Dec. 4, 2008 after she went outside to go have a cigarette. An officer conducting a follow-up search found her frozen body on the hospital grounds a week later. Her body was found just 800 metres from where she was last seen.
"Never at all, and the second she went missing given the weather, there should have been a full scale thorough search for her," said the family's lawyer Allan Garber.
Const. Ryan Busby says police canvassed nearby businesses after hospital staff told him "they were confident that they searched the building." He says they assured him they had done the checks.
Security guards say an immediate search of the grounds was done in a vehicle, but with two other patients missing that day, a foot search was not conducted until 9:15 -- nine hours after Adolph went missing.
And while one security guard did go near the building where the woman's body was found, no one searched around it. Guards said the snow was too deep at that time.
Adolph had just been admitted to the hospital two days before she went missing.
Her family maintains she should never have been left alone as she had previously fled from a hospital in Stony Plain.
"She has a history of wandering off. It took us three days to find her in Stony Plain because she got in a cab and went and rented a hotel room," said the woman's son, Barry Adolph.
The inquiry runs until Friday.
With files from Sonia Sunger
