A grand jury in Ontario County, New York has indicted 33-year-old Alyna Lindenau on two counts of second-degree assault after she allegedly attacked hospital staff at F.F. Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua twice in one month — the latest in a string of at least three separate attacks on healthcare and EMS workers since June. She is being held at the Ontario County Jail.
According to police and court records, Lindenau first attacked EMS workers on June 2, 2026, resulting in harassment charges. On July 26, she kicked a patient care technician at F.F. Thompson Hospital, injuring the technician's knee. Then on August 17, she allegedly bent another technician's thumb during a struggle and threatened to burn down the hospital and kill staff — a threat serious enough to draw an additional terroristic-threat charge on top of assault. She was arrested August 18 and failed to appear for a separate harassment arraignment in City Court before the grand jury indictment came down.
Three attacks, eleven weeks, one hospital
What's drawing outrage from nurses isn't just the violence — it's that the same person allegedly kept coming back. Ehren Strohm, a nurse practitioner who was attacked by a different patient in August 2025, said the pattern reflects a system that keeps releasing people who go on to hurt staff again. "I think it's a failure, honestly, of our laws not being able to keep her inside," Strohm said, adding that assault victims are often left navigating the system alone: "They don't understand charges. They don't understand workers' comp."
Dixie Kendall, another assault survivor who was attacked roughly two years ago, said the goal of the advocacy building around cases like this one is to make the process less confusing for the next nurse who gets hurt on shift: "It's easier for law enforcement. It's easier for, hopefully, the patient."
The push for New York's PROTECT Act
Strohm and Kendall are part of a growing push behind New York's PROTECT Act, legislation currently stuck in committee that would let judges use formal risk assessments when deciding whether to release someone accused of assaulting a healthcare worker, and would fund on-site mental health resources in hospitals to intervene before a repeat incident happens. Advocates are also building a victims' resource toolkit covering court navigation, workers' compensation claims, and PTSD support for staff who are attacked on the job.
I've been thrown into a bed rail by a combative patient and I've had a coworker choked on a med-surg floor. What frustrates every bedside nurse about a case like this isn't one bad night — it's watching the same person cycle back through the ER doors after the last incident with nothing changed. Hospitals love to put out a statement about "zero tolerance for violence" after something makes the news. What actually protects staff is a judge with the legal tools to act on a documented pattern, and a hospital that funds real security and psych intervention instead of a poster in the break room. Until that happens, this keeps being a story about the same names showing up again.
What happens next
Lindenau's arraignment on the indicted assault charges is scheduled for the coming week; a separate court date on the terroristic-threat charge is set for October. Hospital officials have not publicly detailed any changes to security staffing at F.F. Thompson following the third incident. NPR reported this month that rising workplace violence, layered on top of ongoing staffing shortages, has become a driving factor behind a wave of nurse strikes and walkouts nationally in 2026.