‘We need closure’ - Family has little hope of finding elderly man who walked out of hospital four years ago

It has been four years and three months since Jennifer Young laid eyes on her father, Egbert Young. The elderly man was 86 when he disappeared from the Spanish Town Hospital in October, 2017.

Speaking with THE STAR yesterday, Jennifer said she now fears the worst, but desperately needs closure.

"I just want to know what happened to him. I don't think he is alive after all this time, but I would want to know just what happened to his body. My mother dead and gone, and she was worried about him, and she used to get a lot of dreams about him. It is really depressing, and because of that I have developed anger and anxiety issues," she said.

Egbert was briefly hospitalised after he fainted at a bus stop in his community of Gutters, St Catherine.

"He was heading to Glengoffe for his pension and I told him gwane walk, I was coming. So he reached the bus stop before me and he fainted. I rushed him to the hospital and when I reached there they attended to him," she said.

Jennifer said that her father was admitted for observation. She said she visited her father in the hospital a day later. Then two days after her visit she received a call from the hospital that he was being discharged and that someone should pick him up.

She stated that she told the hospital staff that no one was available to pick him up on that day but someone would be there the following morning. But when they turned up at the hospital, Egbert was nowhere to be found.

"We went to the casualty department where I had seen him last and he wasn't there. A staff told me to go to Ward One, but he wasn't there. We searched everywhere and we just didn't see him and we haven't heard anything since. My sister went into meeting with the hospital about two years ago and she said she wasn't pleased with what they told her," Jennifer said.

"My mom, Linette Linsey, died after an illness at KPH [Kingston Public Hospital] in December 2020 and she was very worried about my dad. She and him used to talk about the good old days. He used to live in Glengoffe, but he came to live with us when he was getting old,"Jennifer said.

The distraught daughter said that she has done everything in her powers to find her father. Now, she admits that her hopes of locating him alive are very slim.

"I have posted his picture on social media and made checks to see if he was even at home, but nothing. We just want to know what happen," she said.