{"id":7954,"date":"2023-09-21T05:10:20","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T17:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=7954"},"modified":"2023-09-21T05:10:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T17:10:20","slug":"family-of-man-found-dead-after-leaving-ward-still-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=7954","title":{"rendered":"Family of man found dead after leaving ward still in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The family of a man found dead after he failed to return to the mental health ward at Palmerston North Hospital, where he was a patient, remain in the dark about what happened almost nine months on.<\/p>\n<p>Philip Lucas, 69, left the hospital on 24 December when granted approved leave. A month later his body was found near K\u0101piti Island, and the coroner was investigating his death.<\/p>\n<p>The ward at Palmerston North Hospital, known as Ward 21, was in 2015 found unfit for purpose after the suspected suicides of patients\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/468130\/inquest-into-suspected-suicide-to-begin-8-years-after-death\">Shaun Gray<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/471994\/mental-health-care-must-improve-father-says-at-daughter-s-inquest\">Erica Hume<\/a>\u00a0the year before. Inquests into their deaths were held last year and Coroner Matthew Bates has reserved his decisions.<\/p>\n<p>The government signed off on a replacement ward in 2020 and it was supposed to open late last year, but construction was delayed amid a cost blowout. It\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/486044\/alarm-over-massive-cost-overrun-for-much-delayed-mental-health-ward\">will now open in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The family of a man found dead after he failed to return to the mental health ward at Palmerston North Hospital, where he was a patient, remain in the dark about what happened almost nine months on. Philip Lucas, 69, left the hospital on 24 December when granted approved leave. A month later his body [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7956,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions\/7956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}