When American Airlines lost her Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad, a desperate Keraphline Dupuy hunted for three days before he was found wandering the streets of Brooklyn.
The sick man was freezing cold, soaking wet and 25 miles from LaGuardia Airport, with no recollection of the previous 72 hours.
The airline offered no apology, no explanation — just a refund of $304.60 for the ticket Josaphat Dupuy never used last Jan. 16.
“I want American Airlines to take responsibility for what happened,” Dupuy told the Daily News about the ordeal suffered by her family — which plans a federal lawsuit against the company.
The terrifying situation began in August 2014, when the 52-year-old Josaphat was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, according to his daughter.
Keraphline made the difficult decision to send her dad back to their native Haiti for continuing care from family members. A 6 a.m. flight was booked, with a layover in Miami.
The daughter and her grandmother took Josaphat to the Queens airport, arriving at 3 a.m. Another relative awaited him in Florida to help make the connecting flight.
“First thing we did was tell the attendant that my father has Alzheimer’s and dementia and he cannot be by himself,” said Dupuy, 27.
“We put him in a wheelchair with the attendant, watching him get to the gate. And that was the last time we saw my dad.”
Keraphline, an active member of the military working in Homeland Security, heard from her Miami kin that Josaphat never showed.
A perplexed Keraphline stayed calm initially, but became more and more anxious after several calls to the airline. She grabbed her grandmother and returned to the airport for answers.
An American Airlines ticket counter rep said Josaphat was not listed in their system for special-assistance services — although Keraphline made the request hours earlier.
Port Authority cops reviewed video footage, and discovered he had never passed through security or boarded the flight.
Josaphat Dupuy was gone, and nobody knew where.
The cops searched all the airport’s terminals without success, and Keraphline Dupuy stayed at the Queens airport until midnight.
The exhausted woman feverishly continued the search for her beloved father, driving past old addresses in Brooklyn without luck.
“I was freaking out, I thought he died,” she recalled. “His cell phone wasn’t working, nothing.”
City cops called the next day to report Josaphat’s luggage was found abandoned on a Brooklyn street, with his passport still inside.
The bags also held paperwork from New York University Langone Medical Center in Manhattan. Josaphat was treated there for a backache — and then “just put back out into the streets,” she said angrily.
Hospital representatives would not confirm or deny the emergency room visit, but a bill for $949.67 arrived one month later.
The missing man was spied on the street after three days by a concerned Gerritsen Beach resident. The stranger found Keraphline’s contact information in her dad’s wallet and called her immediately.
Temperatures dipped into the teens during his three January days on the streets. Doctors said Josaphat was lucky to be alive.
He spent the next two weeks recovering in the intensive care unit of New York Community Hospital on Kings Highway.
“This is a textbook case of negligence,” said Keraphline’s attorney, Peter Withey. “We are looking for them to at least acknowledge this even happened.”
An airline spokeswoman declined to go into the details of the case, citing the impending litigation.
