81-Year-Old Alzheimer’s Patient Allegedly Abused by X-Ray Technician at Nursing Home

An x-ray technician has been arrested after a troubling report that he allegedly abusing an 81-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease.

44-year-old Guy Negoue was supposed to be performing an x-ray on an 81-year-old female Alzheimer’s patient in her room at ArchCare Terence Cardinal Cooke Nursing Home, near Central Park in East Harlem, when a nurse outside the room heard the patient crying.

The nurse entered the room and witnessed Negoue bending over the elderly woman. She nurse reports that Negoue then threw a glove he had been wearing into the trash can and said, in part, “I didn’t do anything on purpose. I realized a lubricant was on my hand, which is why I wiped it on the bed.”

Negoue has been arrested and accused of endangering an incompetent person and improper sexual contact.

The victim’s son, 52-year-old Rodney Vargas, calls this the “lowest thing that I ever heard.”

“How despicable do you have to be that you would do that to someone who is mentally incapacitated?” he asks.

Vargas says his mother is a former nurse herself and a wonderful mother. He says she’s always loved Christmas and baking and treasured old movies and R&B songs from the 1960s. She’s been through a lot, including, recently, a broken wrist and a case of COVID-19. She is a human being deserving of respect, despite the fact that she’s mentally incapacitated due to her disease.

“When she tested positive [for COVID], I was devastated,” says Vargas. “I said, ‘I’m going to lose my mother and never see her again. I’m not going to be able to have a funeral.’ She got through it, and then this happens, and I was so angry.”

But Vargas also says he’s thankful for the nurse who came to his mother’s rescue. “She was my mother’s voice when my mother didn’t have one. If I saw her, I’d give her a hug and thank her.”

Negoue has been charged with endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, as well as a misdemeanor sex abuse charge. He may face up to four years in prison.