A woman recovering at St. Pete’s Bayfront Hospital was attacked by a fellow patient with behavioral problems who may have committed another attack in Tampa two months earlier.
Judith Conrad was recovering from surgery at Bayfront Health St. Petersburg August 7, 2016, when she says fellow patient David Weber “violently and sexually attacked, assaulted and battered” her.
Police arrested David Andrew Weber, 53, a St. Petersburg transient who is listed as residing at the Florida State Hospital at Chattahoochee, a mental-health facility owned by the Florida Department of Children and Families. Weber was charged with felony attempted sexual assault.
In a suit filed January 16, Conrad is accusing Bayfront of failing to protect her, even though Weber “had demonstrated signs and symptoms of his propensity for violence and aggression.”
Bayfront, at 701 6th St. S in St. Petersburg, is owned by the publicly traded Community Health Systems based in Franklin, Tennessee. Community owns 158 hospitals throughout 22 states, including 24 in Florida.
Records show a man named “David Andrew Weber” – possibly the same Weber as in the Bayfront incident – was arrested in Tampa about two months earlier than the attack on Conrad in St. Petersburg.
In that episode, Weber had allegedly punched and kicked a wheelchair-bound man who suffered from a previous brain injury. Weber was charged with one count of abuse of an elderly or disabled adult. The case docket shows he was found incompetent to proceed with the prosecution, and the court committed him to Florida DCF care.
The David Weber who allegedly attacked Conrad gave his birth date as April 15, 1963, while the David Weber in the Tampa case claimed to have been born one day earlier, April 14.
It should be noted that since Weber could be the same person involved the previous attack, and had expressed violent tendencies, questions arise on what further precautions Bayfront might have taken to protect other patients.
