I don’t know why I find this so darned funny

I don’t know, but this story of truly abysmal stupidity — stupidity that, fortunately, had no permanently bad outcome — just tickled my funny bone:

A Foster City man is being held for allegedly hitting his father in the head with a hammer because he mistakenly thought the 81-year-old man had to be hospitalized before he could be admitted to a nursing home, prosecutors said Monday.

Jayantibhai Patel, 57, is being held on $500,000 bail, despite requests from Patel’s father and other relatives that he be released.

Patel lived with his father but wanted to return to India, where has lived off and on, Foster City police Capt. Jon Froomin said. The father, who uses a wheelchair, did not want to move, authorities said.

Patel then decided to place his father in a nursing home. “He was under a belief, we don’t know why, that you can’t go straight into a nursing home without being in the hospital,” said Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County’s chief deputy district attorney. “He thought, ‘I can overcome that problem. I’ll put him in the hospital.’ ”

Patel allegedly struck his father in the head with a hammer Oct. 6 while the elderly man was in the bathroom. Although a prosecutor initially said the father was unconscious for about an hour before Patel called paramedics, police said the man was conscious during that time.

On the way to the hospital, “the paramedics were saying, ‘Sir, we understand that you fell,’ ” Wagstaffe said. “That’s when the father told them, ‘Absolutely not. My son hit me over the head with a hammer.’ ”

The father suffered two cuts on his head and has been released from the hospital, said Patel’s attorney, Thomas Gray.

Read the rest here.