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FOR THE RECORD: incorrectly identified the facility where David Chavez lived before he moved to Emeritus at Sandia Springs in Rio Rancho, where he is alleged to have killed Gilbert Perea. Chavez previously resided at Haven Behavioral Hospital in Albuquerque. The name was incorrect in the police investigative report.

Copyright © 2014 Albuquerque Journal

Gilbert Perea’s family thought they had made the right choice.

They placed the 79-year-old man at Emeritus at Sandia Springs in Rio Rancho – part of a multibillion-dollar chain with more than 1,100 facilities nationwide offering care for seniors, many with dementia.

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The facility’s website says, “We have promised ourselves that we shall always treat our residents as we would our own loved ones. Nothing less than our best will do.”

“They promised us the world,” said Perea’s sister Margaret Druilhet. “We thought he would be safe.”

He wasn’t.

On June 1, less than a month after Perea settled in, another man was assigned to share Perea’s two-person room in the facility’s memory care unit. The man was David Chavez, a retired State Police officer with dementia and a history of violence, including attacks on his own family, according to a police report.

Perea’s daughter Teresa Calderon visited her father at Sandia Springs the day after Chavez’s arrival and later told police that his new roommate’s behavior was “aggressive.” She said he was “snapping a belt” and walking into her father’s side of the room, according to the police report.

A few hours later, police said, Chavez, 67, attacked Perea, beating him so badly that he had to be hospitalized. He died three weeks later. The pathologist who conducted an autopsy deemed the cause of death blunt force trauma to the head. Based on the timing of the beating Perea received, she called it “murder,” reads the report.

Kristin Puckett, a spokeswoman for Nashville, Tenn.-based Brookdale Senior Living, which owns Emeritus, said staff immediately reported the incident to police. They also reported it to the state, as required.

“Our residents are a part of our family, and their safety and security is our top priority,” Puckett said.

Rio Rancho police who investigated the case referred it to the office of District Attorney Lemuel Martinez for review. As of Friday, he said, the case was still being reviewed by his attorneys.

He said he couldn’t recall any other case of a person living in a nursing home being accused of murder in the nearly 14 years he has been district attorney.

The issue of competency revolves around whether the defendant can understand the nature of the charges and the penalties sufficiently to assist an attorney in his defense, Martinez said.

“If his competency is brought to issue by his defense attorney, then a forensic evaluation will take place and expert opinion will be given to court based on the analysis, interview and results,” Martinez said.

Chavez is now at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, the state’s only psychiatric hospital, the police report said.

Blood everywhere

According to the police report, an officer responded to a call at 2:30 a.m. on June 1 about a battery at Sandia Springs. Staffers told the officer they heard someone calling for help, went to the room, found Perea on the floor wounded and Chavez standing nearby with blood on his hands and feet.

Emergency medical technicians who responded reported that Perea had blood on his mouth and nose, swelling around both eyes and forehead and abrasions on his legs. The report said there was blood smeared on his chest and on the floor around him.

EMTs took him to Presbyterian Rust Medical Center.

A nurse at Sandia Springs told police Chavez had arrived from another facility two days before and that he had “a history of violent outbursts.” She said she “would have evaluated (Chavez) the next day.”

According to the report, the officer attempted to question Chavez and Perea but both patients suffered from dementia and neither could answer questions about what had happened.

“Based on these circumstances, I could not conduct my investigation any further at this time,” the officer wrote in the report.

On June 21, Perea died at Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital. A deputy medical investigator notified Rio Rancho police and an officer attended an autopsy performed at the state Office of the Medical Investigator by pathologist Hannah Kastenbaum.

After the autopsy, “Kastenbaum stated she had determined Perea’s death was a murder due to blunt force trauma to the head.” She based her determination primarily on the timing of the battery, the police report said.

‘Assaultive behavior’

Perea grew up in the Sandoval County village of San Ysidro. A barber by profession, he loved running and competed in 10k races and marathons.

“That was his passion, running,” Druilhet said.

Although he and his wife, Bobbi Perea, had been living in Kanab, Utah, for many years, his dementia problems prompted family members to bring him back to New Mexico to be closer to his siblings, children and grandchildren, Druilhet said.

She and another family member toured Sandia Springs and felt comfortable about locating Perea there.

Rio Rancho police learned that Chavez came to Sandia Springs from Haven Behavioral Senior Care Facility in Albuquerque, which provides inpatient psychiatric stabilization and treatment to older adults experiencing acute symptoms of depression, anxiety, mood swings or psychosis, according to its website.

Chavez’s medical records, which Rio Rancho police obtained from Haven, documented speech difficulties and a history of “violent tendencies,” including attacking family members, the police report stated.

He was diagnosed with severe dementia with “assaultive behavior.” Medical records said he showed improvement at Haven and was released to a lower level care facility, which was Sandia Springs, according to the police report.

After the attack on Perea, Chavez was returned to Haven and then transferred to the state mental health hospital in Las Vegas.

Druilhet told the Journal that Perea’s wife has retained an attorney and is considering legal action.

The attorney, Dusti Harvey, said she is reviewing the case.

Harvey is also representing a plaintiff in a wrongful death lawsuit against an Emeritus facility in Roswell.

Last year, a jury in Sacramento, Calif., awarded $23 million in punitive damages against Seattle-based Emeritus. The lawsuit by the family of an 81-year-old woman claimed Emeritus accepted her although she was too debilitated for the care the facility provided.

In considering Perea’s case, Harvey said, “our point would be that they (Sandia Springs) had notice of him (Chavez) being violent like this.”