Patient gets 11 years for attacking nurse

A nurse who was blinded in her left eye in 2010 when a psychiatric patient at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream attacked her with a broken chair leg told a Nassau judge Monday that her life and her career were destroyed by the attack.

"I remember blood pouring down my face and in my eyes," said Marie Sweeney, 54, of Oceanside. "I thought he was going to knock my head off. He never uttered a single word as he hit me."

Donte Oakes, 23, of Springfield Gardens, who pleaded guilty in March to first-degree assault for attacking Sweeney, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

When Nassau County Court Judge William Donnino asked Oakes if he wanted to say anything before he was sentenced, Oakes said, "Speed it up."

Outside court, Sweeney said it had been a shock to be so close to Oakes again.

"Emotionally, I'm a wreck," she said.

Sweeney was moderating a group-therapy session when Oakes entered the room with the chair leg hidden in his shirt, she said. As she fought for her life, she said, she remembers crawling under a coffee table to protect herself.

"I thought of my husband and my children," she said. "All I could think was that I would never see them again."

Sweeney said she can no longer work as a nurse -- a career she says she loved for 28 years. She said she suffers from terrible head and neck pain and vertigo, and has trouble driving without the use of her left eye.

Days after the Sept. 10, 2010, attack, dozens of nurses, joined by politicians and union officials, gathered outside Franklin Hospital Medical Center to draw attention to workplace violence committed against nurses.