CORAL GABLES, Fla. – A lawsuit has been filed against a South Florida hospital after a patient is alleged to have killed another patient there last month.
The family of Raul Alexander Rios attended a news conference Friday announcing the lawsuit against Aventura Hospital.
Aventura police said Alexander Jackson was admitted to the hospital and placed in the same room as Rios when he strangled Rios with a bed sheet. His body was later found on the hospital room floor.
Rios' mother wept as she remembered the last time she saw her son alive.
Ervin Gonzalez, who represents the family, said the hospital was aware that Jackson had acted out with hospital staff while being admitted.
The lawsuit alleges negligence on the part of the hospital. It also alleges that security was nowhere to be found when Rios was killed.
Rios was being treated for severe depression. His family said he was heavily medicated and was likely unable to fight back.
"For a private hospital as affluent as Aventura to neglect our son, our house is destroyed. Our family is destroyed," Francis Paloumbis said of her brother's death. "It's never going to be the same. Every day my mother says, 'I can't live without him. I'm nothing without him. He was my life.' So now what do we do?"
The lawsuit doesn't specify a monetary figure. Gonzalez said he'll leave that for a jury to decide.
Aventura Hospital has not commented on the lawsuit.