A 36-year-old former nurse was sentenced to 12 weeks' jail on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to one charge of voluntarily causing hurt to the 77-year-old victim. The convict was arrested for punching an elderly man in a nursing home in 2018.
The former nurse, Bernardo JR Perdido Ramos used to work at Orange Valley Nursing Home. Last year, on November 21, the convict and another nursing assistant Dasanayak Achchillage Saman Kumara were distributing bedsheets and pillowcases to residents in a room at the nursing home.
On the same day, Ramos' trolley accidentally hit the bed of the elderly man, who suffers from dementia. That woke him up and the victim shouted 'who disturbed me.'
During sentencing, the court came to know that Ramos went to the victim and said 'Why? Me! Why? Me!" Then the elderly man hit the accused on his chest and in reply Ramos punched the man four to five times on his face and as a result, the elderly man fell back on his bed.
Kumara, who was present at the scene, shouted at Ramos while saying that "Why what happened? Why did you punch him?" But Ramos failed to control his anger and punched one or two times on the face of the victim before leaving the room.
After that incident when Kumara asked the elderly man what happened, he did not reply but the co-worker of Ramos saw a cut on the patient's ear, which bled and he also found out that the left eye was also swollen and red.
Soon Kumara informed his supervisor about the incident and a nursing manager made a police complaint stating that a patient of the nursing home was assaulted.
After a medical check-up, a doctor found bleeding in his eye and puffiness on his eyelid, which healed within two weeks.
But an hour after the incident, when the elderly man was asked if any of the employees had punched him, each time the man, who has dementia said "no."
As per the Singapore Penal Code, "Whoever, except in the case provided for by section 334, voluntarily causes hurt, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years, or with fine which may extend to $5,000, or with both."
