A registered nurse who worked at a Southern California assisted living facility has been charged with abuse by neglect of a 69-year-old woman who died after she developed gangrene, authorities said Wednesday. Emily Jones, 40, of Riverside pleaded not guilty to elder abuse that caused great bodily injury and remains free on $50,000 bail, the state attorney general’s office said. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Jones was a case manager for a resident at Brookdale Senior Living in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, in 2017 when she failed to properly assess an ulcer on the woman’s right heel, prosecutors said.
“As a result, a Plan of Care was never developed and the ulcer worsened into a wound that required the resident to undergo emergency surgery to her right foot, which had become septic and gangrenous,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. Jones also failed to notify a doctor and the woman’s family that her heallth was declining as a result of the lack of care and she eventually died, prosecutors said.
“Elder abuse does not always come in the form of a physical attack. It can result from utter neglect and lack of proper care, as we allege in the case of Emily Jones,” Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in his office’s statement. “Assisted living residents are a vulnerable population all too often victimized by acts of neglect and improper care.”
“Brookdale Senior Living does not have a record of employing anyone with this name and date of birth, including at its former Brookdale Riverside location, so we cannot provide a comment on this case,” said a statement from Tennessee-based Brookdale Senior Living.
“With that being said,” the statement added, “Brookdale takes the safety and wellbeing of our residents very seriously and this type of conduct or behavior by an individual at Brookdale would never be tolerated under any circumstance.”
AP News • Contributed
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