A grieving widow said she will never recover after her dementia sufferer husband walked through an unlocked door at a care home and fell down a staircase.
Thomas Ellis tumbled down 17 steps in the middle of the night at Sunnyside Residential Care Home in on the couple's 61st wedding anniversary.
Due to his medical condition, 82-year-old Mr Ellis should not have been able to reach the staircase on his own because his room was separated from it by locked doors.
However a Liverpool Council safeguarding report found that in the early hours of the 4th January these were left open.
Mr Ellis had buzzed a staff member but had then managed to get out of his room and down the hallway.
He was found at the bottom of the staircase and taken to hospital where it was discovered he had broken his shoulder and ribs.
Sunnyside Care Home dispute the safeguarding report's statement that Mr Ellis went through three doors that were meant to be locked and say they have raised this with the report's authors.
Instead they say Mr Ellis went through a single doorway which was supposed to be locked but wasn't.
After spending a number of weeks in hospital, during which Mrs Ellis says he was not able to eat or talk properly, he died at the Royal in February.
There is no suggestion in the report that his death was linked to the fall.
Eleanor Ellis, 81, who lives in Belle Vale, said: "We will never get over it. I just feel so angry about what has happened."
A carer who was working when the incident happened has been dismissed, while another was given a written warning.
Mrs Ellis said her husband had gone into the home just before Christmas having been in hospital before that.
She said: "He had gone there the week before Christmas
"We had been in that day and he seemed OK.
"At 7 o'clock in the morning I got a call and they said he had fallen down the stairs and that he was at the Royal.
"He had broken bones down one side and couldn't really eat or talk properly."
Mrs Ellis says she has never received an apology from the care home.
Sunnyside's registered provider Arthur Wood said the home did make multiple attempts to contact her after the incident.
Mr Wood said: "Our thoughts are with the family of Mr Ellis.
"We have fully cooperated with safeguarding and CQC to try and ascertain the circumstances around the incident.
"We have approached Mrs Ellis to offer our support but she refused to return our calls and when she did, she informed us that she did not wish for us to contact her at all.
"We are unable to make further comments at this time."
