CRIME AND THE ELDERLY OF L.A. : Violence in the Autumn of Life : CLYDE KENNEDY : He Was Vulnerable to Predators: ‘It Was Like Beating a Child’

There are few cases that more tragically illustrate the vulnerability of the elderly than that of Clyde Kennedy.

At 72, Kennedy was a friendly man who liked to keep busy. But the retired electrician was weakened by throat cancer and chemotherapy. His larynx had been removed and it was hard to understand his words through his electronic voice box.

So Kennedy, a decorated World War II Navy veteran, spent most of his time simply sitting on the small patio next to his trailer home in Cudahy.

“He was just an old man who never bothered anybody,” said Audrey Sanchez, a neighbor. “He was a helpless old man.”

And he was vulnerable to predators.

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A woman who cleaned Kennedy’s trailer also cleaned out his checking account by forging his name to several thousand dollars worth of personal checks. Marcos Valentine Ramos, a sometimes neighbor, also wanted some of the old man’s money, according to Kennedy’s family.

Ramos, a 46-year-old drug addict, has been in and out of state prison since the 1970s, mostly for burglary. He walks with a cane from an injury suffered several years ago when he got drunk and fell from a roof, according to his mother.

On a warm, sunny afternoon last Nov. 18, a drunken Ramos accosted Kennedy as he sat in front of his trailer, neighbors say.

Kennedy later told relatives that after demanding money, Ramos punched him, beat him with his aluminum cane, kicked him when he fell and then poured a beer over him as he lay bleeding on the concrete.

“To me, it was like beating a child,” said Luz Gueits, manager of the trailer park, who called police. “The cops and everybody else were in shock.”

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While police put out a bulletin for Marcos’ arrest, Kennedy was transported to Santa Marta Hospital on the Eastside, where he was treated for a badly cut scalp, a broken rib and severe bruises on his body and arms.

He had been hospitalized for little more than a week when his daughter-in-law, Miriam Kennedy, said she received a call from a Santa Marta social worker who unexpectedly said that the hospital was discharging Kennedy immediately because his Medicare benefits had run out.

Stunned, Miriam told the woman that no one was able to pick him up, that she was sick and that her husband was working the night shift. Hospital officials were unmoved, saying that they would send the patient home in a taxi.

It was well after dark when Clyde Kennedy’s cab arrived. Miriam was too ill to get out of bed, so her 16-year-old daughter, Shanan, went outside to help Kennedy into the house. Because the old man was extremely weak, Shanan asked a neighbor for help.

“When I looked in the taxi, I was shocked,” said the neighbor, Harriet Clouse. “He looked like something out of Auschwitz.”

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It was a chilly night, Clouse said, and the hospital had sent the gaunt Kennedy home wearing only a short hospital gown and slippers. She could see that he had been fitted with a catheter.

“He wasn’t naked,” Clouse said. “But he might as well have been.”

Eventually, the cabdriver offered to carry Kennedy into the house and put him in bed. The elderly man was unable to move or speak and had to be fed.

The day after his discharge by Santa Marta Hospital, Kennedy’s son took him to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Long Beach, where he was admitted with possible aspiration pneumonia, slight dehydration and general pain from the beating. Three weeks later, Kennedy died of heart failure.

The coroner’s office initially termed the death a homicide stemming from the beating, but later concluded that Kennedy died of natural causes. Ramos was arrested by sheriff’s deputies in April, five months after Kennedy was beaten. He faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse. His trial began Friday.

Kennedy’s family members are bitter about what they consider the two indignities suffered by the elderly man in his last days: the beating and his later treatment by Santa Marta. They believe that Marcos should be prosecuted for murder and that Santa Marta Hospital contributed to Kennedy’s death through negligence.

“(Marcos) took the fight out of my dad,” Bill Kennedy said. “When I saw him in the hospital, he didn’t have the will to fight back.”

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Santa Marta Hospital officials admit that Kennedy’s release was not handled properly.

“I think we could have done a better job than we did,” said Will Malari, hospital administrator. “We screwed up.”

Malari explained that the hospital had arranged for a visiting nurse to see Kennedy the day after his release. He also said that a staff member’s vacation had contributed to the poor release procedures and that hospital officials had difficulty reaching Kennedy’s family by phone.

“But that’s no excuse,” he acknowledged.

Asked about the propriety of putting a patient in Kennedy’s condition in a cab alone, Malari said: “We could have used our own van. I basically think we did not do enough TLC.”