Atlanta woman, 94, charged with assualt

My tax dollars at work :eyes:

A 94-year-old resident of an Atlanta nursing home is fighting claims she assaulted a fellow resident with a telephone.

Her attorney, Robert Kaiden, confirmed Thursday that Atlanta police arrested Theodora Garreau Sunday at Westminster Commons, a nursing home at 560 St. Charles Ave., off Monroe Drive.

Police said Garreau threw a telephone at another elderly woman, Kaiden said. The reason for the alleged incident was not known, and Kaiden denied it even happened.

Officers initially cited Garreau with disorderly conduct but later upgraded the charge to simple battery, her attorney said.

Kaiden insisted Garreau, who weighs about 80 pounds and has arthritis, did not hurt the other woman. He plans to fight the charges and is considering a civil suit against the nursing home.

“They violated her patients’ bill of rights,” Kaiden said. “You’d think they would have some sort of standard operating procedure to handle this in a different way.”

The Atlanta Police Department’s public affairs division did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday night.

A woman who answered the phone at Westminster Commons said no one was available for comment.

Garreau is no longer staying at the nursing home, Kaiden said.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/01/29/nursing_home_arrest.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab&imw=Y

and proceed to beat another resident. Had to send the other guy to the hospital and boy was the family hot and I don't blame them. They staff so lightly at night as to be unsafe. If the aid had not just happened on to it-the guy would have been beaten to death.

Nursing homes are so for profit-they mix residential populations that should be kept apart. Some folks are agressive in their dementia and should not have certain objects near them.

... I'd probably do more than throw telephones ... if I could. They're horrors. The 'care' in most nursing homes is given to the paperwork and billing, NOT the patients.

in house TV repair, i had to go to nursing homes quite frequently. I absolutely despised those places. I was walking through the front door of one when an elderly woman "made a break for it". The nursing staff grabbed her and threw her back in. I decided right there that i would rather be shot than live out my days in a nursing home.

:)

I had to spend 6-8 hours there, at a minimum, just to make sure they didn't kill her. It was awful ... and it was supposedly one of the best in the area. Yikes.

Right now, she's in the hospital -- first time in 6 years -- because she's got compression fractures in two vertebrae (L2 and L4). It's draining all my emotional resources. She's in pain and it's been since inauguration day when she was admitted and still little to no relief. It stymies me. I don't know what I can do to make it better.
:banghead:

:hug:

:hug: :loveya: :hug:

She should be at home with someone but she's in a nursing home I feel sorry for her and the woman she threw a phone at.

and called the house cops to help subdue her. They looked at her and laughed.....until they saw she'd pulled the sink out of the cement wall and had left craters behind where it had been bolted in.

My guess is that the old gal has been violent before and they're trying to get the family to allow her to be medicated.

There's damn few of them in comparison to the women when they get that age.

in prison. The inmate population looks down on vicious thugs who prey upon the elderly.

which says a lot about it. I do show up at odd hours and I have always found her being well taken care of, even down to her favorite television shows. Some of their employees have been there over 20 years. And every aide and nurse can tell me how my wife is doing at any time. I had around the clock help at home for years, but the time came when even that did not work. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do and everyone is right, even the best nursing home is not home. When my wife asks to come home it rips my heart out, but there is really no other way she can receive adequate care.

I am very sorry your wife has to live apart from you. I can only imagine how difficult it's been for you.

you could care for her and then you couldn't care for her just wondering because I went through that same dilemma