WENATCHEE — The family of a Prestige Senior Living resident who died last year outside the senior facility in the snow is suing the business on claims of negligence, abuse and abandonment.
Thomas Andrewjeski — the surviving son of Edmund "Andy" Andrewjeski — filed a lawsuit Monday in Chelan County Superior Court and alleged that Prestige Senior Living failed "in their responsibilities to keep Mr. Andrewjeski safe and alive through a series of negligent acts and errors."
Edmund Andrewjeski, 96, had been living at Prestige Senior Living, specifically in the north end of its campus, from Feb. 2017 until his death Dec. 30, 2022.
Andrewjeski was born and raised in Minnesota and served in the U.S. Navy as a signalman during World War II. He was a "sweet and classy gentleman with a great sense of humor," according to his obituary published in The Wenatchee World.
A day before his death, Andrewjeski asked Prestige staff to take him to the emergency room because he was experiencing a health problem, according to the lawsuit filed Monday. He received care that afternoon and into the evening at Central Washington Hospital's emergency room.
In advance of his discharge, Confluence Health staff spoke to a Prestige employee by telephone and asked how to best transport Andrewjeski back to Prestige. The employee said via Apple City Taxi or a "cabulance," according to the lawsuit.
At 6:45 p.m. Dec. 29, another Prestige employee working the night shift at the Prestige Post-Acute and Rehabilitation Care building — the adjacent building to where Andrewjeski lived in — received a call from the hospital to confirm Andrewjeski was a resident.
The Prestige employee denied that Andrewjeski was a resident, according to the lawsuit.
Confluence Health staff called Prestige multiple times in an attempt to confirm he lived there and had to call Andrewjeski's family to confirm he lived at Prestige Senior Living. A family member told Confluence Health staff that he could take a cab and he had a key to his room.
Andrewjeski was dropped off by a taxicab around 8:35 p.m. at the Post-Acute and Rehabilitation Center instead of the building to the north where he lived.
Upon entering the Post-Acute center, Andrewjeski approached the Prestige care employee said "who he was, that he lived in the building, and that he needed his walker that he had left by the entrance when he went to the hospital," the lawsuit said.
The employee told him that her records did not show him living there.
According to the lawsuit, the employee did not ask for Andrewjeski's identification or take any other steps to verify his name, his residential address, or the building he lived in at Prestige Senior Living.
The employee walked Andrewjeski to an elevator in the same building, and then Andrewjeski rode to the third floor by himself, according to the lawsuit. A resident on the third floor reported that a man knocked on his door sounding "frantic."
Andrewjeski exited the building from a side door, which locked behind him, and walked out into 28-degree weather. He walked 400 feet along a roadway in the back of the rehab building before falling in the snow, according to the lawsuit.
A snowplow driver found Andrewjeski's body around 4:45 a.m. Dec. 30, 2022 after he plowed his body about 120 feet along the roadway, thinking it was a bag of garbage. Andrewjeski's body was under about six inches of newly fallen snow.
An autopsy showed that Andrewjeski had died of hypothermia, "freezing to death," according to the lawsuit.
"Prestige and its employees ... breached their duties of care and failed in their responsibilities to keep Mr. Andrewjeski safe and alive through a series of negligent acts and errors," according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses Prestige Senior Living of negligence, medical malpractice and that through "direct and proximate result" of their actions resulted in Andrewjeski being locked out in the snow, falling or collapising outside and ultimately dying.
The Andrewjeski's estate is requesting for "economic and non-economic personal injury damages, including but not limited to Mr. Andrewjeski's pre-death physical and emotional pain and suffering," according to the lawsuit.
