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HEALTH AIDE BEATS WHEELCHAIR PATIENT: COPS

A heartless Long Island healthcare aide beat up a helpless patient and locked him in a room for hours without food, water or medicine, cops said yesterday.

Kelvin Christie, 25, of Queens, was charged with endangering the welfare of an elderly person, unlawful imprisonment and assault after abusing a quadriplegic man in the patient’s Garden City South home.

The victim’s wife said Christie cursed and spat at his 68-year- old wheelchair-bound patient before punching him in the face. He then locked the victim in a room and left for two hours, police said.

“I have a new aide coming in this week,” the wife said. “I hope it’s not Jack the Ripper.”

The 67-year-old woman said she went out to run errands on Sept. 20 and returned to find her husband in his chair bruised, gasping for air and panicked.

Officials from Carelink, the Brooklyn-based home health-care agency that assigned Christie, told police that they found nothing alarming in his background check.

But cops said the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Christie had been arrested three times for assault, but never was found fit to stand trial because of a diagnosed mental defect.