Woman finds mentally ill dad sleeping on sidewalk after hospital workers sent him home in wrong cab

Robert Hill was discovered on the side of the road after being discharged from Detroit Receiving Hospital. (Photo: Fox 2)

A woman in Detroit was expecting her mentally ill father to be driven from the hospital to their shared home on Friday, but instead her dad went missing after being discharged. To her horror, she later discovered him sleeping on the sidewalk as if he didn’t have a home.

Rosalee Smith had admitted her dad, Robert Hill, to Detroit Receiving Hospital on Dec. 14 for assessment and medication management because he has bipolar schizophrenia and had been refusing treatment, according to Fox 2 Detroit. Smith, who is her dad’s legal guardian, was at work when he was due to be discharged, so she entrusted hospital workers with sending him home in a Detroit City Cab — just as she had done in the past.

Smith told Fox 2 that the hospital even gave her the taxi number — 606 — and assured her they’d help Hill inside her house. But by 2:30, he still hadn’t arrived — and Smith was shocked to receive a phone call from the hospital asking whether her father had made it home safe because he hadn’t. She called Detroit City Cab company and says they told her that her dad was a “no-show.” She added: “He was never placed in cab 606 through the Detroit City Cabs.”

So she filed a missing person’s report and went out to search spots her dad was likely to be when he was well. While driving, she spotted a man on the side of the road, sleeping under a blanket. It was her father.

“He didn’t know who I was,” Smith told Fox 2. “He barely spoke his name.” An unknown person had apparently even taken his shoes and stripped him naked. “Someone did place a blanket and food out there,” she said, “but he’s not homeless.” Disoriented and suffering from hypothermia, Hill was brought directly back to the hospital in critical condition. The police department then launched an investigation into how this could possibly happen.

The police report revealed that Hill was never actually placed in a Detroit City Cab, as the hospital had confirmed. Officers discovered via video surveillance that a staffer had placed him in a gray Chrysler Pacifica owned by a different taxi service. “Whoever brought him down … they waited for the cab,” Smith said the police told her. “The cab I guess never showed up in their time frame, and they flagged another service down that had no knowledge of his home.”

Police officers could not figure out, however, how Hill ended up on the side of the road.

Yahoo Lifestyle has reached out to Detroit Receiving Hospital and will update this story should they reply. In the meantime, a spokesperson for the facility told Fox 2 that Hill had been given “a safe discharge.”

“I just want to know what happened,” Smith told Fox 2. “Horrible. Disgusting. Is that what they do to mentally ill people or old people that have no say so in the matter?” Though Smith hadn’t heard from hospital officials as of Thursday afternoon, she said she wants to make sure they never do this to another individual.

Hill continues to recover, and Smith told Fox 2 his condition has been upgraded from serious to stable.

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Woman finds mentally ill dad sleeping on sidewalk after hospital workers sent him home in wrong cab