86-year-old veteran left out in the rain after returning home from Miami's VA hospital

LAKE WORTH, Fla. - Rain, wind, thunder and lightning accompanied a severe thunderstorm around one o'clock Tuesday afternoon. As many ran for shelter, 86-year-old Jeremiah Thompson says he rode out the storm in his wheelchair outside his home.

"It was raining and as hot as the devil," says Thompson.

Thompson spent three months in the Miami VA hospital after having throat surgery.

Tuesday was his first day home.

"I felt lousy. You expect to see open arms when you come from a place like that and it wasn't there that time," he says.

Thompson says he made the hour trip north on a bus provided by "Patriot Transport."

When he and the driver got to his Lake Worth duplex, no one was home.

After knocking on the door several times and blowing the horn, Thompson says the driver let him off the bus.

"I came over and knocked on the door, and knocked on it, and by the time I finished he was gone," says Thompson.

With his belongings by his side, Thompson says he sat in the storm with no umbrella or poncho, waiting for his family who wasn't expecting him for another two hours.

"I asked a neighbor to call my daughter-in-law Frances," says Thompson.

Frances Tapia was walking home from school when she got the phone call.

Her neighbor picked her up and when she got to the front of her home she was heartbroken by what she saw.

"He looked like he was stressed out. He was hot," says Tapia.

Tapia says she called the transportation company. She says they told her they're not obligated to make sure people get inside their homes after they are dropped off.

"What are they obligated to do? Leave an 86-year-old that can't walk or stand at a front door?," she asks.

The transportation company would not comment on the incident, nor would the Miami VA hospital.