According to Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta, nurse Octavia Robinson allegedly stuck her fingers down the woman’s throat, stuffed towels and clothing into her mouth, and repeatedly hit her in the back. The victim’s two roommates tried for over 30 minutes to get help from staff and law enforcement.
“There was blood on the patient, there was blood on the bedding, and there were discarded clothing or towels with blood around the bed,” Baratta said.
The Upper Nazareth Township Police Department, the report found, was accustomed to receiving calls from Gracedale for false or imagined complaints made by residents with access to cellphones, and officers were allowed to judge the reliability of complaints on an individual basis. This led to skeptical officers disregarding the call. Operators at the county 911 center also did not inform Gracedale staff of the calls until around 3:20 a.m.
However, the report said, a nursing supervisor at Gracedale also did not take the incident seriously, and told an operator that she was going to go up to the room and confiscate the phone.
I sort of get where the police are coming from, and they might be in a tough position where if they get enough false reports that they just literally can’t respond to every single one. And you probably can’t charge someone with memory issues for calling in a false police report if the person calling can’t be considered legally competent for their actions. Last week, when I was staying with my in-laws, my wife’s grandmother kept calling my father-in-law (her son) to complain about a pain in her side which is a chronic condition, but with her memory issues she literally doesn’t remember that she has it and keeps thinking it is an urgent matter requiring an emergency room. He finally got tired after the 10th call in an hour and drove her to the ER, where they did test and found absolutely nothing new or actionable, and by the time the tests were done she said she was fine.
What do you do with that? Dealing with the elderly can be very challenging.
The nursing supervisor though, that’s less defensible. Especially if you have 2 people calling about a third person in trouble. And I also think the police were negligent in not at least informing the facility of the calls until late.
This seems pretty light to me. I did a little digging on the potential consequences in New Jersey for “abuse of a care-dependent person” and according to what I found, that could be 3-5 years. But a misdemeanor, at most, is 6 months in jail if she serves any time at all. And charging it as simple assault also seems pretty light to me. I wonder if prosecutors are concerned about factors like the woman potentially having mental health problems, and believing that she was “helping” the victim, they couldn’t get a jury to convict on anything stronger. I can only speculate.
Also, apparently the nurse wasn’t employed by the facility directly, but was hired on from another agency (likely a temp agency) and had only started work 12 days earlier. So they might not have known much about her. Still, I imagine the facility could be liable for endangering a patient (they absolutely should be).
I was going to say, what the fuck made me stupid enough to think it was in New Jersey? Then I went back and re-read the articles, and saw that the perpetrator was from New Jersey. Okay, then I was just lazy, which is probably worse than stupid.
A woman named Lindsay Jackson from San Jose, California was arrested today on multiple counts and multiple charges including stalking and hate crimes. Her MO was to go after anyone who did not appear to be purely white who was in the company of children who were white and accuse the adult of trafficking the children. She would drive by people on the street who met that description and stop to accuse them; she would track people to their homes and accuse them; she also invaded child care facilities and libraries (much of this is not established fact yet, but there are numerous complaints, and videos of her online).
Here is one video from the site that apparently was the first to track her down.
I should add that she apparently feels that she is on a mission from God, and that God has told her who is trafficking children. So prepare for counter-charges back from her about her freedom of religion.
My reading of the charges is that in Tennessee, child abuse or neglect that results in the child’s death is first degree murder. Full stop. Judge for yourself,
(a) First degree murder is:
(1) A premeditated and intentional killing of another;
(2) A killing of another committed in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any first degree murder, arson, robbery, burglary, theft, kidnapping, aggravated abuse of an elderly or vulnerable adult in violation of § 39-15-511, aggravated neglect of an elderly or vulnerable adult in violation of § 39-15-508, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect, or aircraft piracy
I do think it boils down to either it was, as they say, a tragic accident or it was first degree murder with no in between. That’s just my reading. I’m genuinely curious about your or @LSLGuy’s interpretation of the same statute.
To say anything useful about that first degree murder statute in connection w the child drowning, we’d need to first consult the statute that defines “aggravated child abuse” and the one that defines “aggravated child neglect”.
But yeah, if the conduct fit either of those aggravated child abuse / neglect statutes then by definition that’s also murder 1.
Police say the suspect and victim did not know each other, and the motive for the attack remains unclear.
Looking at her face, I’m gonna say meth.
My brother would get those kinds of sores when he was on it.
Meth sores, or lesions, typically appear as red, inflamed patches on the skin. They can also be crusty and may ooze. These sores often result from skin picking, a common compulsive behavior among meth users due to the sensation of bugs known as “crank bugs” crawling under their skin.
(a) A person commits the offense of aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect or aggravated child endangerment, who commits child abuse, as defined in § 39-15-401(a); child neglect, as defined in § 39-15-401(b); or child endangerment, as defined in § 39-15-401(c) and:
(1) The act of abuse, neglect or endangerment results in serious bodily injury to the child;
I mean, not to be flippant, but the kid died. I think it easily meets the standard of serious bodily injury.
The question really comes down to:
(a) Any person who knowingly, other than by accidental means, treats a child under eighteen (18) years of age in such a manner as to inflict injury commits a Class E felony; provided, however, that, if the abused child is eight (8) years of age or less, the penalty is a Class D felony.
(b) Any person who knowingly abuses or neglects a child under eighteen (18) years of age, so as to adversely affect the child’s health and welfare, commits a Class A misdemeanor; provided, that, if the abused or neglected child is eight (8) years of age or less, the penalty is a Class E felony.
But you can knowingly neglect a child in a way that leads to a preventable accident, meaning that those two elements are not in opposition to each other.
It’s like when a person chooses to drive intoxicated and kills someone in a car accident. They didn’t intentionally cause a collision, but they did intentionally cause the situation that led to the accident. The law often treats it the same way, or at least gives a greater deal of liability to a person who unintentionally causes harm through intentional negligence.
He let the kids go unaccompanied to a pool a fifth of a mile from the apartment. Even if one of the kids could text him that there was trouble, it would take him at least a minute to get there. I can’t imagine any of us would feel at all comfortable letting kids we were watching do that. I suppose he could say that he didn’t know how far the pool was or that he thought there would be other people there. Regardless, we can agree that what he did is shockingly irresponsible if not criminally so.
