June 11, 2004, 10:35AM
Alzheimer's patient ordered to mental hospital
Family, lawyers can't keep him from driving
Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2622176 FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A man who has Alzheimer's disease was ordered locked up at a mental hospital
for criminals after he continued to drive despite a judge's order to stop.
The man thinks he's a salesman and wants to go to work, his lawyer says.
Albert Brenner, 75, was being held without bond at the Broward County Jail while waiting for space at the hospital. He has previously been ordered to give up his driver's license and car keys, and the man's family and lawyers have tried to keep him from driving.
Judge Geoffrey D. Cohen said in his order Wednesday that
Brenner should be held at the hospital until his mental health can be "restored," enabling him to be tried on battery charges. *SNIP*
Cohen initially ordered Brenner not to drive as a condition of being released from jail after he was arrested twice in 2002 on battery charges involving his companion, Irene Kaplan, then 86.
*SNIP*
Despite efforts to get him to stop driving, Brenner continues because
he believes he is a salesman of '70s-era rotary telephones, another lawyer, Betsy Benson, said. Friends, lawyers and family members have been unable to convince him that he no longer has to drive to work.