FORT COLLINS - Five members of the Cinemark Theater's management team were put on admininstrative leave after the body of a Loveland man went unnoticed for five days in the theater's bathroom.
Sixty-six-year-old George DeGrazio's family reported him missing last Monday, the same day he'd gone to see a movie without telling them, and the same day - according to the coroner - he had a heart attack.
It happened inside a single-person bathroom that locks from the inside, according to the Larimer County Coroner's office.
"We didn't have any ideas," Dylan DeGrazio, George's son, said on Monday.
A missing person's report went out. Days passed. Police discovered George's car in the theater parking lot and asked around. There was still no sign of George DeGrazio.
"We didn't know if he had a stroke, became confused, wandered off, fell into a ditch and froze," Dylan DeGrazio said.
On Saturday, the smell led employees to that bathroom.
"It's stunning in the long run - the fact that the bathroom got missed," Dylan DeGrazio said.
The coroner's office says a theatre employee had to break open a lock to get inside, where they found George DeGrazio slumped on the floor.
"I still get these images of what it was like, sitting in that restroom - just nobody around, nobody had any idea. And those are the images that stick with me, those are the things that I have a hard time with," Dylan DeGrazio said.
George DeGrazio had struggled with health issues for years.
"He had severe coronary artery disease," Dylan DeGrazio said. "George was not going to survive that heart attack."
Still, Dylan DeGrazio says no excuse can make up for what happened.
"Like - come on! You just had a human being pass in your facility. In your business establishment - and you can't even stretch your hand out to apologize to the family affected by it? That's poor ethics," Dylan DeGrazio said.
Dylan DeGrazio says his father was a retired art teacher who had taught at the elementary, high school and college levels.
He wants his father to be remembered not for the circumstances surrounding his death, but for his accomplishments in life.
"We are deeply troubled and concerned about these events, and we offer our most sincere condolences to the DeGrazio family for their loss," James Meredith, vice president of marketing and communications for Cinemark theaters, said. "Cinemark is evaluating its opening and closing procedures to determine how this could have taken place and to ensure that it does not happen again."
(KUSA-TV © 2012 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)