He may have signed his own discharge.
If the police were in attendance on the admission unit, which they undoubtedly would with an incident like this, and the patient were able to communicate enough to enact his own self-discharge, then I'd say it pretty unlikely the police in attendance wouldn't have been able to provide some small detail about what happened.
This is all moot though (in my experience working on an admissions unit within a major East Midlands trust) as patients who are discharged home and later die from their
injuries are very rarely able to communicate. The prognosis must have been pretty poor (ie: terminal) for a hospital to allow an injured patient to be discharged home and I'm sure were it a discharge against hospital advice it would have been mentioned in the press article.
As I say, just in my experience, other opinions are welcomed.
