Man with dementia who wandered from family's Washington Heights apartment found safe
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, Manhattan (WABC) -- A Thanksgiving reunion held even deeper meaning for a family who was desperate to find a man with dementia who wandered from their apartment in Washington Heights during the early morning hours of the holiday.
The family of 76-year-old Edward Bess discovered he was missing around 7 a.m. on Thursday.
A neighbor's doorbell camera captured Bess leaving his family's Washington Heights apartment, located on West 159th Street, with his blue walker, no shoes and no coat, wearing just dark grey slippers and a grey zip-up sweater. To make the situation worse, Bess had no phone or ID.
Bess, who has dementia, has been at an assisted living facility in the Bronx for the past year, but his worried wife, Vivian Clark Bess, told Eyewitness News that they brought him home for Thanksgiving.
"I thought, at least for the holidays, he should be with us, and he should have a break from being there," she said. "And so we brought him home."
They brought him home on Tuesday, and he didn't seem to want to leave, but on Thursday morning, he somehow made it down a few flights of stairs with his walker.
The family and police canvassed the neighborhood and got word from the MTA that someone matching his description had gotten on a bus, likely on Edgecombe Avenue, and rode it to Harlem near where he once worked.
"We showed his picture around," Bess's wife said.
Then around 7 p.m., word came that the 76-year-old was at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx.
Bess is still being evaluated at the hospital but appears uninjured after somehow ending up in a Bronx subway station.
His family will be celebrating Thanksgiving a little late after putting the holiday on hold until he was found, but now they have much more to be thankful for.
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