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Heat stroke patient arrested while incoherent at hospital asks why he's still charged

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FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — After a Frankfort man was arrested on a trespassing charge while at a hospital with symptoms of a heat stroke, the hospital apologized for the way he was treated and asked that the charge be dropped. He’s asking why he’s still charged.

Patrick Hollon was taken to Frankfort Regional Medical Center in June after he got overheated working an overnight shift at a plastics plant. When he got to the hospital, Hollon said he was treated for a drug overdose and then asked to leave.

Hollon said he’s never used illegal drugs and had not used them the night of the incident at the hospital.

Hollon was still incoherent and in and out of consciousness when employees at the hospital called police to have him removed, police body camera footage obtained by LEX 18 shows.

“I think it's pretty clear, there was really no decision to trespass or to leave,” Hollon told LEX 18 Thursday. “Someone wouldn't be able to think their way out of a wet paper bag in my condition.”

In the footage, a nurse can be heard telling a police officer that Hollon’s work had called an ambulance over a possible heat stroke, but said they’d “narcaned” him instead. When asked if the Narcan had worked, the nurse told the officer that it had.

Hollon was ultimately arrested and charged with trespassing. The body camera video shows officers helping Hollon to the police wagon and lifting him into the vehicle to be taken to jail.

When Hollon was released from jail, his family took him to another hospital. That hospital sent him to University of Kentucky Hospital where Hollon was treated for multiple days and at one point intubated.

A spokesman for the hospital told LEX 18 last month that they’ve requested that the charge against Hollon be dismissed. But as of Thursday, the charge was still active and Hollon is still scheduled for a pretrial hearing in December.

“It has been spending a lot of time up in my head,” Hollon said of the criminal charge against him. “The sooner I get it over with and done with the sooner I can begin recovering.”

The hospital previously told LEX 18 that multiple employees involved in the incident have been fired. They have not confirmed how many were fired.

Hollon and his attorney, Kamp Purdy, are also working to get any other video of the incident at the hospital. Specifically, they want any hospital surveillance video of what happened before police arrived.

“We want to know what all happened to Patrick,” Purdy said. “What exactly did take place?”

Hollon has filed a lawsuit against the hospital, the Frankfort Police Department and several of the individual hospital’s employees. That lawsuit is still pending.