Before dying of cancer in a Virginia facility, an air force veteran was found

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Laquana Ross said his father, Joel Marrable, had died Saturday at the Eagles' Nest Community Living Center of the Atlanta VA Medical Center.

Ross said that she was not angry at the VA against ants, but that she wanted her father's story to inspire change.

"Maybe it can move the needle and improve the process," she said. "The VA is busy, they have a lot of patients and have to meet enormous needs."

The Atlanta VA health system said it's "always striving to provide veterans with the best health care available.When we do not meet this standard, we hold ourselves accountable", in a statement to CNN.

"That's why we launched a thorough review of the situation to prevent this from happening again. We apologized to the Marrable family and took immediate steps to address this issue and ensure no other veterans will be affected in the future. "

What happened

Last week, school staff told Ross that school workers visited Marrable in bed.

She said that they told her, "We thought Mr. Marrable was dead, we did not know what happened, everyone jumped in and out. grabbed and made sure we were doing everything we could to eliminate her ants. "

Marrable, 73, had a feeding tube, was weakened by cancer and his ability to speak was limited. He was still alive.

Joel Marrable as a young man.

Ross said the staff said they emptied the bed and washed his father, cleaned the room, put new sheets on the bed and put him back in the same room.

The next day, he was again covered with ants – on his stomach, in the feeding tube, in the diaper, everywhere.

Ross said that she contacted the service administrator and they said her father would be moved and that they would check every 15 minutes.

An hour after arriving in the new room, he died.

"I felt very small in the world on Saturday when my father passed away," she said. Now, I can share his story and my father is important to someone else than me and my family. Now the world knows and the world cares about what happened. "

In a statement to WSB, a subsidiary of CNN, the VA stated that the rooms in the facility had been stripped, cleaned and inspected for ants. Other measures taken include removing open containers and food from the outside, staff doing more room visits, daily pest control, a third-party visit, and a visit. afterward of an expert on pests of the VA.

Ross told WSB that his father had served in Vietnam in the air force and had cancer. She told the station that she had asked the staff if her father was upset and had learned that it was ants.

She told CNN that her father should be remembered as a good person who loved God.

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