Hospital worker with fake ID fled UK after teenage girl, 14, died on his watch, inquest told

Independent

3 days ago

An agency care worker who failed to supervise a suicidal teenage girl at a scandal-hit mental health hospital was working under a fake ID and fled the country shortly after she died, an inquest has been told.
Ruth Szymankiewiczat, 14, died after she was left alone at Huntercombe Hospital, near Maidenhead in Berkshire, despite requiring constant one-to-one observation, jurors at the inquest were told.
The hearing was told the support worker who had been responsible for monitoring Ruth had only gone through a day or day-and-a-half of online training before his first shift at the children's psychiatric hospital on February 12, 2022.
He left his shift at 8pm when it ended, but should have waited to hand over to another worker before doing so, to ensure Ruth could be watched at all times. But the coroner told the jury he 'just left', meaning Ruth was left alone for 15 minutes.
In that time, Ruth, who had an eating disorder, made her way to her room where she committed an act of self harm. She was found and resuscited and transferred to the local acute hospital, John Radcliffe in Oxford, where she was admitted into intensive care. Ruth died two days later, on 14 February 2022, having suffered brain injury.
Assitant coroner for Buckinghamshire, Ian Wade, said it later emerged that the worker, who joined the hospital on the day Ruth was left unattended, had been using false identity documents and was hired through an agency under a false name, Ebo Achempong.
'The evidence showed he had been employed through an agency, who checked his identity documents, and they even trained him by putting him through a day or day-and-a-half course,' Mr Wade told jurors.
'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.'
Mr Wade continued: 'It turned out he wasn't Ebo Achempong, that was a false name. He had been assisted to acquire a false identity documents and he never returned to work at Huntercombe.'
After Ruth's death, police tracked down the worker's phone which revealed he had gone 'to Heathrow airport and got on a plane to Ghana'.
The coroner said police think they know 'who he truly was' but that he was "never seen again" after leaving the country.
'It seems that he learned what happened that evening,' Mr Wade said. "He let Ruth down. He let everyone down.'
The inquest, which started on Monday, heard Ruth should have been under continuous one to one observations and watched at all times following a suicide attempt on 7 February.
When Ms Szymankiewicz was left unsupervised, she was able to asphyxiate herself, the coroner said. 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.
After Ruth's death, the Care Quality Commission launched a criminal investigation alongside the police. Police have taken no further action. The CQC have not stated whether they will take not yet taken forward a prosecution.
The court further heard privately-run 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.
The Huntercombe Hospital in Maidenhead, also called Taplow Manor, closed last year after joint investigations by The Independent and Sky News. It was part of a group, formerly run by The Huntercombe Group and now taken over by Active Care Group.
Ruth's parents described the teenager as having 'lived life whole heartedly'.
The inquest at Buckinghamshire Coroner's Court in Beaconsfield continues.