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|      | > **Palm Beach Post**                                         |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > **News Wednesday, April 11**                                |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > **Mental patient kills nurse, police say**                  |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > *By Colleen Mastony, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer*\         |
|      | > Wednesday, April 11, 2001                                   |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > **PORT ST. LUCIE** \-- A mental patient who said he was     |
|      | > sent by God to rid the world of bad people is accused of    |
|      | > beating a nurse to death with his fists and injuring two    |
|      | > other patients as he was being involuntarily committed to a |
|      | > hospital early Tuesday.                                     |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > An orderly said he had left nurse Alda Ellington, 47, alone |
|      | > with Alberto Serrano, 34, of Stuart after being called away |
|      | > to quiet a disturbance in another part of Savannas Hospital |
|      | > & Treatment Center.                                         |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > When the orderly left, Serrano was calmly eating a tuna     |
|      | > fish sandwich. Ten minutes later another nurse saw him      |
|      | > wandering the hallways. The orderly returned and found      |
|      | > Ellington in a pool of blood inside the ward for severely   |
|      | > disturbed patients.                                         |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Serrano was. charged with first-degree murder and two       |
|      | > counts of attempted murder and is being held without bail   |
|      | > at the St. Lucie County jail.                               |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > In a separate incident three days before, Serrano had       |
|      | > punched a patient unprovoked while in the waiting room of a |
|      | > different psychiatric hospital, New Horizons in St. Lucie   |
|      | > County, while he was waiting to be admitted there,          |
|      | > according to a St. Lucie County Sheriff\'s report. Deputies |
|      | > arrested him on a misdemeanor charge of battery but         |
|      | > released him the next day on \$500 bond.                    |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Ellington had stopped breathing by the time paramedics      |
|      | > arrived at Savannas at 2:45 a.m. She sustained head         |
|      | > injuries and died at the scene, according to paramedics.    |
|      | > After the rescue crew left with Ellington, a staff member   |
|      | > discovered two elderly patients had been beaten while       |
|      | > sleeping in their unlocked rooms.                           |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Olive Simpson, 75, of Wellington was in critical condition  |
|      | > at St. Lucie Medical Center Tuesday night. Elizabeth Scott, |
|      | > 64, of Port St. Lucie, was treated at the St. Lucie Medical |
|      | > Center for a broken nose and released back to Savannas      |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Deputies found Serrano, 34, of 2917 Delmar Ave., soaking    |
|      | > wet and quietly sitting in a chair outside the hospital. He |
|      | > had jumped in a nearby pond after the attack.               |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Serrano answered basic questions and gave police his name   |
|      | > and age in a low, unwavering voice. Asked what happened, he |
|      | > said, \"I don\'t know.\" His swollen hands had deep cuts on |
|      | > the knuckles.                                               |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Though he later confessed, officials were not sure whether  |
|      | > that statement would be admissable in court because of      |
|      | > questions surrounding his competency. \"If he is found to   |
|      | > be insane, then you could never prosecute,\" Assistant      |
|      | > State Attorney Lynn Park said at a news conference Tuesday. |
|      | > \"Whether they know right from wrong, that\'s the basic     |
|      | > issue.\"                                                    |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Police had taken Serrano to New Horizons of the Treasure    |
|      | > Coast on Friday, according to Serrano\'s girlfriend Nadia   |
|      | > Pena, 27. Friends in a house where he had been staying      |
|      | > called police after Serrano woke them up in the middle of   |
|      | > the night, yelling \"things from the Bible,\" preaching to  |
|      | > and slapping them, Pena said. The friends refused to press  |
|      | > charges, so Serrano was taken to New Horizons, Pena said.   |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > **Out to punish \'bad people\'**                            |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > \"He always said the same thing,\" Pena said. \"(He said:)  |
|      | > \'Don\'t worry about anything because I\'m going to take    |
|      | > care of all the bad people in the world\' \" Bad people     |
|      | > were those who \"did not follow God\'s rules . . . like     |
|      | > fornicators, child abusers, drug addicts, his wife,\" Pena  |
|      | > said. Serrano was separated from his wife, according to     |
|      | > Pena. She had known Serrano for three months.               |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Pena bailed Serrano out of the St. Lucie jail Saturday      |
|      | > after the incident at New Horizons. \"He was fine. He was   |
|      | > very happy to see me,\" she said. New Horizons chief        |
|      | > operating officer John Romano declined to comment on the    |
|      | > incident.                                                   |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Serrano also seemed fine on Monday when Pena arrived home   |
|      | > from work about 8:30 p.m. She drove him back to his         |
|      | > apartment and was about to leave when she found him in the  |
|      | > bathroom with a knife. \"He said, \`God is calling me and   |
|      | > he wants me to do it,\' \" Pena said. She took him to       |
|      | > Martin Memorial Medical Center about 12:30 a.m.             |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Doctors there were familiar with him, Pena said, and they   |
|      | > decided to transfer him to Savannas Hospital under the      |
|      | > Baker Act, which allows officials to involuntarily commit a |
|      | > person who has been determined to be a threat to himself or |
|      | > others.                                                     |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Pena followed the transport car to Savannas Hospital. When  |
|      | > Serrano arrived shortly after 2 a.m., the nurse at the      |
|      | > intake station was busy with another patient. She asked     |
|      | > orderly James Chambers, 32, to take Serrano back to the     |
|      | > intensive treatment ward, Chambers said.                    |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Serrano was calm and cooperative as Chambers led him to the |
|      | > ward, in an isolated section of the hospital, and searched  |
|      | > him for weapons, Chambers said. Serrano said he was hungry  |
|      | > and Chambers gave him a tuna fish sandwich. \"This guy was  |
|      | > calm and cool,\" Chambers said.                             |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Chambers was the only male staff member on-duty that night, |
|      | > he said. Serrano seemed passive, and it seemed safe to      |
|      | > leave him with Ellington when Chambers was called to        |
|      | > another unit, Chambers said.                                |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > About 10 minutes later, another nurse called to report      |
|      | > seeing a strange man wandering the halls and trying to      |
|      | > unlock the door in another ward. Chambers went to           |
|      | > investigate and found Ellington. Serrano had used           |
|      | > Ellington\'s keys to escape the locked ward.                |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > There is no alarm button to signal an emergency on the      |
|      | > ward, sheriff\'s officials said. The ward\'s heavy doors    |
|      | > and isolated location would have prevented anyone from      |
|      | > hearing a struggle, Chambers said.                          |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Savannas Hospital, a 70-bed facility owned by Liberty       |
|      | > Management Group, released the following statement Tuesday: |
|      | > \"We are deeply saddened by the death of a staff member.    |
|      | > Mental illness is a devastating, often chronic illness,     |
|      | > which requires staff dedication and compassion. This        |
|      | > particular staff member had a deep commitment to treating   |
|      | > mental health patients and had worked in this field for the |
|      | > last 25 years.\"                                            |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Meanwhile, friends mourned Ellington.                       |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > \"Alda was the nicest person you ever want to meet,\"       |
|      | > Chambers said. \"She was always smiling.\" A native of      |
|      | > Jamaica, she had moved to Port St. Lucie about 12 years ago |
|      | > from New York City. She had worked as a nurse at the        |
|      | > Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Fort Pierce until a   |
|      | > year ago, when she started working the night shift at       |
|      | > Savannas Hospital. She had married in 1993 and divorced in  |
|      | > 1997, according to county records. Since then she lived     |
|      | > alone. She did not have any children, but kept a wide       |
|      | > circle of friends.                                          |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > **Alcohol leads to arrests**                                |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Serrano has a criminal history that includes driving under  |
|      | > the influence of alcohol in 1998 and 1994, carrying a       |
|      | > concealed weapon in 1989, and several traffic violations    |
|      | > over the past decade. Reports indicate he was under the     |
|      | > influence of alcohol in most cases, and several mention     |
|      | > that he was violent either before or after his arrest.      |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > A native of Puerto Rico, he has worked as a carpenter and   |
|      | > roofer for more than a dozen years, primarily in Martin     |
|      | > County. Friends said he was currently working for Piper     |
|      | > Aircraft in Vero Beach.                                     |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > He was married twice and has an 8-year-old daughter with    |
|      | > his second wife, Kimberly, court records show. In 1991,     |
|      | > Serrano wrote a letter to a Martin County judge saying he   |
|      | > had been hospitalized for mental problems for three months  |
|      | > and was experiencing financial problems.                    |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > In 1995, after he was charged with violating a probation    |
|      | > term stemming from his drunken-driving conviction,          |
|      | > Serrano\'s wife wrote a letter stating her husband had      |
|      | > suffered from \"mental as well as physical illnesses\"      |
|      | > which caused him to lose a job.                             |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > \"Alberto is a very fine and respectable person,\" his      |
|      | > wife, Kimberly, wrote. \"He has his faults, but he is a     |
|      | > good person. He has never been in any major trouble         |
|      | > before.\"                                                   |
|      | >                                                             |
|      | > Staff writers Teresa Lane, Nirvi Shah, Jim Reeder, Jill     |
|      | > Taylor and Pat Moore contributed to this story.             |
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