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Woman Wants Explanation After Her Uncle Wandered Off From Nursing Center Last Week

CHICAGO (CBS)-- A woman says a south shore nursing home has not given her any explanation after her 70-year-old uncle went missing for six days and she found him in the middle of the street miles from the facility.

Tanisha Tate says her uncle Charles Frazier suffers from dementia and the family moved him to The Villa at Windsor Park early this month to keep him from wandering off. She said the staff assured their family he'd be safe and he'd even have a monitoring device on his ankle.

"Who was working? Where was the staff? How did he get out in the first place?" Tate said.

Her story starts Wednesday, when Tate said the staff called her family around 1 a.m. to say Frazier had gone missing.

The family got in touch with police and also went looking for Frazier on their own.

Tate said she found him Monday night in his old neighborhood near 35th and King--seven miles north of the nursing home.

"I saw him in the middle of the street," she said.

According to Tate, he was still wearing his ankle monitoring device.

"Does the ankle bracelet work?" she said. "Does the system work at all? Or is it just show?"

Those are questions she has not gotten the answer to because the family says the Villa at Windsor Park staff has not contacted them since last week.

Employees would not answer questions from CBS 2 on Tuesday, either.

Chicago police said hey learned after he was discharged that Frazier spent some time in a hospital over the weekend, but the family says they don't know the cause of that visit.

The family now says he is back in the hospital, where he is being treated for blisters on his feet and dehydration.

"What if it was the dead of winter?" Frazier's sister, Barbara Tate said. "I can't even think about that because we might have a different story to tell."

The family says Frazier will not be going back to that nursing home.

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