'Mr Unknown' Back With Family 7 Weeks After Brain Injury: Report

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — An Uzbek man was reunited with his family after going missing during his first day in the United States, suffering a traumatic brain injury and spending nearly two months at St. Luke's hospital, according to reports.

Sabirjon Akhmedov, 61, was reported missing on Aug. 3 after disappearing while buying a bottle of water in Chinatown, the Daily News first reported. Akhmedov had arrived in New York City that same day with his nephew in order to catch a bus to Ohio to visit his daughter, according to the report.

Three days later, the man was found in Riverside Park near West 110th Street suffering a traumatic brain injury, the Daily News reported. Nobody knew who the man was, or what happened him, and the staff at St. Luke's hospital took to calling him "Mr. Unknown," the Daily News reported.

Akhmedov spent three weeks in the ICU and needed a tracheotomy and a stomach tube to help him breathe and be fed, the Daily News reported. One of his doctors at St. Luke's, 26-year-old anesthesiology resident Ayesha Arif, tried communicating with the man after he stabilized.

"I knew he must have family somewhere. I felt like, if this was my family member, I’d hope someone would be doing everything in their power to figure out who he was," Arif told the Daily News.

After 52 days in the hospital, Arif was able to find a missing poster created by NYPD detective Sal Tudisco, who was investigating Akhmedov's disappearance. Tudisco had been investigating the disappearance for weeks before Arif contacted him, and was beginning to fear the worst.

"I spoke to the family on a regular basis and I really felt bad," Tudisco told the Daily News. "Usually if somebody doesn’t return in the first couple of days, it’s not good."

The NYPD detective called Akhmedov's family after hearing the good news, and the family drove through the night to be reunited the next day, the Daily News reported. Akhmedov was eventually discharged from the hospital and has been living with his daughter in Ohio, according to the report.

Read the full Daily News article here.

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