Months after a man’s trip to a Frankfort hospital landed him in jail, the criminal trespassing charge against him has been dismissed.
Patrick Hollon was taken to Frankfort Regional Medical Center in June after he got severely overheated at work, but the hospital treated him for a drug overdose and then called police when he wouldn’t leave,according to a lawsuit filed by Hollon.
In Franklin County District Court on Tuesday, a prosecutor told Judge Chris Olds that he’d watched video and saw that Hollon’s behavior hadn’t met the criminal trespassing charge against him. Specifically, the charge states that a person must “knowingly” stay at a premises unlawfully to be guilty.
In both body camera and surveillance footage that shows the moments leading up to Hollon’s arrest in the hospital, he is shown to have been disoriented and unable to respond to questions.
Hollon told LEX 18 on Tuesday that he felt the dismissal of the charge against him is a step in the right direction, but he and his attorneys still have questions about what happened in the hours before and after his arrest.
This week, Hollon’s attorneys shared video that showed Hollon spent eight hours naked in a jail cell before he was released and his dad rushed him to another hospital.
“It’s demoralizing, it’s hard to watch,” Hollon said Tuesday. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Hollon’s attorneys argue that there’s more video from the Frankfort Regional Medical Center that they haven’t been given access to. Hollon was at the hospital for about 3 hours before his arrest, but so far only about 30 minutes of hospital surveillance video has been released.
“Mr. Hollon wants to know what happened to his life during those 3 hours,” said Kamp Purdy, who’s representing Hollon in the civil case. “Everybody is balking at the video and doesn't seem to want to let anyone know what's going on.”
Hollon’s attorneys hope that if anyone has information about what happened at the hospital, they’ll come forward.
“It's a person's constitutional right to be able to go to a hospital and get care,” said Lauren Brooke, who represented Hollon in his misdemeanor case. “And not only did he not get care, he was treated like a common criminal when he went there.”
