A man accused of fatally choking a patient with autism at an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale in 2023 has been arrested, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Alexis, 43, was arrested Tuesday on a manslaughter charge, Fort Lauderdale Police officials said.<\/p>\n
According to authorities, Alexis was an employee at the assisted living facility, Genuine Love and Care on Northwest 6th Place.<\/p>\n
In June of 2023, officers arrived at the facility after a patient was reported dead, police said.<\/p>\n
Documents said that Alexis admitted that he restrained the patient, a 26-year-old with autism named Jason Similien.<\/p>\n
Owners of the facility told investigators that Similien suffered from psychosis and anxiety.<\/p>\n
Arrest documents state that investigators spoke with another employee, who claimed Alexis choked the patient to the point of being unconscious multiple times that night.<\/p>\n
The employee provided audio recordings where the patient was heard choking and moaning.<\/p>\n
“Jason was actually asking for cookies, and out of frustration and not being trained adequately, and being in there in the first place when he should have been fired, Jimmy Alexis actually choked and killed Jason,” said Adam Finkle, an attorney representing Similien and his family.<\/p>\n
Finkle claims that employees had made previous internal complaints against Alexis before Similien’s death, and he was not fired<\/p>\n
“This was a specialized place that knew about Jason, knew about Jason’s struggles and where he had come from,” he said. “The idea that Jimmy was acting properly is without reason.”<\/p>\n
Police said a death investigation determined foul play was involved, and the department worked with the Broward State Attorney’s Office to formally charge Alexis.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the police department’s Fugitive Unit located Alexis and arrested him on a warrant, officials said.<\/p>\n
In court on Wednesday, the attorney representing Alexis, who now works elsewhere, questioned why this case from three years ago was being brought forth now.<\/p>\n
“This just came out of nowhere,” Alexis’ attorney said. “It’s very strange to be making an arrest three years later.”<\/p>\n
And while Alexis faces those aggravated manslaughter charges, he did make bond. His attorney states he denies any allegations.<\/p>\n
There is also an ongoing civil case as well that was filed by Similien’s family against the group home and the property owners.<\/p>\n
NBC6 has reached out to the owners of the assisted living facility and their attorneys, and has not received a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man accused of fatally choking a patient with autism at an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1219,249,251,250],"class_list":["post-421589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-crime-and-courts","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}