Police in Ohio said this week that they gave a nursing home resident a ride and dropped him off at a gas station without ever knowing he was a dementia patient who had eloped.

Mark Billiter was found dead Tuesday, seated against the outside wall of a self-serve gas station, just outside Canton’s city limits.

He was about four miles from Glenwood Care & Rehabilitation, a skilled nursing facility also known as Stone Crossing by Lamplight Communities. A family member said he lived there after a heart attack that deprived his brain of oxygen and contributed to his dementia.

It was a family member who called police at 7:51 a.m. Monday to report that Billiter was missing from the nursing home, according to the Canton Repository.

Police then contacted the nursing home, police Capt. David Kurzinsky said.

A call by McKnight’s to Glenwood Care was not returned by production deadline Thursday, but the facility earlier issued a statement to the Canton newspaper.

“There is an ongoing investigation regarding this matter,” it said. “At this time, we cannot comment.”

Police are developing a timeline to show when Billiter left the facility, and examine their own response when he was picked up by an officer.

“Preliminarily, we believe he left around 8 p.m. on the 15th [Sunday],” Kurzinsky said.

When police encountered Billiter wearing dark clothing and walking near a ramp after 10 p.m. Sunday night, he hadn’t been reported missing, Kurzinsky said Thursday.

According to a police account, an officer stopped Billiter and “ran him through the system.” He told the officer he was trying to get to a family member and asked for a ride. The officer dropped Billiter off at the gas station near the city line, and temperatures dropped into the low 30s over the next few hours.

An official cause of death has not been released.

The family has hired an attorney who said this week that the tragedy was avoidable.

“The travesty in this case is the nursing home did not follow (its) own policy,” Tracey Laslo told the Canton Repository. “There should’ve been an immediate perimeter check of the facility by the staff, the family should have then been contacted so that they could assist and the police should’ve been contacted.”

The Stark County’s Sheriff’s department is continuing to investigate Billiter’s death.