Man charged in destruction of Georgia hospital room
Athens GA August 5 2019 Authorities recently arrested a Statham man after allegedly destroyed a room at Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center.
Athens-Clarke County police responded to Athens Regional shortly after 5:30 a.m. Tuesday in response to an agitated suspect wandering around with a fire extinguisher, according to a police report.
Officers calmed the man down and got him to leave the hospital, but then they received another call that he had possibly destroyed a medical room prior to being met by police.
An officer went to observe the room and, according to the report, saw tiles ripped from the ceiling, the air conditioning vent hanging like it had been pulled from the ceiling, and other assorted items thrown around the room.
The report also states that an adjacent room had a bed flipped over. The officer was also alerted to a window on a door in the stairwell that was broken.
Hospital security told the officer they had received a call about a male matching the suspect’s description that was allegedly vandalizing cars in the parking deck, according to the report.
The suspect wasn’t seen in the parking deck and was eventually located in the cafeteria wet and with cuts all over his body, the report states.
He denied damaging the room, but a security photo showed the suspect in the hall near the destroyed room in the same time frame that the incident occurred.
The report states he was charged with second degree criminal damage to property and later taken to jail.
The damage to the room was valued at $2,000.
