Girl, 14, died at psychiatric hospital after 'worker' with false ID left her alone - then fled the UK, inquest hears

Daily Mail​

2 hours ago

A 14-year-old girl who should have been under constant supervision at a psychiatric hospital has died after a 'care worker', who used a fake ID to get the job, left her alone before fleeing to Ghana, an inquest has heard.
Ruth Szymankiewicz, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, had an eating disorder and was a patient at Huntercombe Hospital's Thames ward, a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) in Maidenhead, since October 2021.
She had been placed under strict one-to-one supervision following a self-harming incident 10 days before her death, a jury inquest held at Buckinghamshire Coroner's Court heard on Monday.
However, on February 12, 2022, the member of staff responsible for watching her - a man then known as Ebo Acheampong - failed to maintain the constant supervision plan, the court was told.
He left Ruth unaccompanied for around 15 minutes and she was left to walk around the hospital and to her room, assistant coroner Ian Wade KC said.
The teenager was found unconscious shortly after, having been left alone long enough to asphyxiate herself and sadly died at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford two days later.
A post-mortem examination carried out by the Home Office later determined the preliminary cause of death to be 'hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy' - a type of brain damage due to lack of oxygen.
It later emerged Acheampong had been using false identity documents and was hired by the hospital under a fake name, Mr Wade told the court.
Speaking to jurors, the coroner said: 'The evidence showed he had been employed through an agency (Platinum), who checked his identity documents, and they even trained him by putting him through a day-and-a-half course.
'It appears that these particular processes were the norm and were sufficient to enable a hospital to employ this person.
'But on February 12, he did not keep Ruth under a constant watch.
'Some time around 8pm in the evening, this man ended his shift without knowing where she was and without making sure that he handed her over to another member of staff to continue the one-to-one care regime.
'He simply left.'
Acheampong never returned to work at Huntercombe Hospital and instead fled the UK to Ghana, where it is thought he is originally from, jurors were told.
'It seems that he learned what happened that evening,' Mr Wade said.
Thames Valley Police launched an investigation and found Acheampong had gone to Heathrow airport and got on a plane to Ghana 'never to be seen again', the coroner said.
'You will not hear from that man, and he let Ruth down,' Mr Wade told jurors.
The court further heard Huntercombe Hospital had been inspected twice by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) prior to the incident.
'The CQC had not reported favourably on Huntercombe,' the coroner told the inquest.
Active Care Group, which owned Huntercombe at the time of Ruth's death, has since closed the facility.
Paying tribute the Ruth, her parents Kate and Mark, a GP and surgeon respectively, said she loved animals and reading and had a 'fiery, determined' personality and a 'huge heart'.
They said she 'was and still is deeply loved' and added her death has 'shattered' them.
The jury was told Ruth had climbed Kilimanjaro aged just 11 and had once lived in Tanzania for a period of time with her parents and two sisters.
Ruth was initially being cared for on the children's ward at Salisbury Hospital but was transferred to Southampton for further care after she was injured when a nasogastric tube fed contents into a lung instead of her stomach in September 2021.
Her parents said they were told days later that Ruth would be moved to Huntercombe Hospital, which they found had a poor rating and was a two-hour drive away from their home.
Her mother, Dr Szymankiewicz, said the process for why Ruth needed to be moved to the hospital and onto a PICU was 'opaque' and that the system was 'incredibly difficult to navigate'.
In a statement, she said: 'We wish we had fought harder. We had no idea how awful it would be.'
She said there was 'never any sense that staff thought it was important to communicate' with them about her daughter's care.
Serious incidents, including Ruth drinking cleaning fluid and having black eyes, were not raised with them, Dr Szymankiewicz added.
The inquest, at Buckinghamshire Coroner's Court in Beaconsfield, is expected to last for about two weeks.