For 15 years, the state has had the right to take over an adult-care home if residents were at risk of death or serious harm.

Now the Cleveland County social services department is asking officials to take that step for the first time.

Fearing injury or even death for residents of a Cleveland County adult-care home, the county has asked for something that officials say is an unprecedented action -- a state takeover of the privately owned center. The move would require Superior Court approval.

In addition, the county has asked the state Department of Health and Human of Services to shut off new admissions to the center, Unique Living in Fallston.

The Cleveland County social services director, John Wasson, requested the actions in a June 17 letter to adult licensure chief Barbara Ryan.

"Something needs to be done there. Otherwise, we are going to be possibly looking at other injuries or even death," Wasson said Wednesday.

Gary Jacobs, president of the Arizona company that manages Unique Living, said his company has turned the center around "180 degrees" since taking it over May 1.

County and state regulators have investigated the center since July 2006, when the body of a 59-year-old resident was found behind the center six days after he disappeared. The center, which was previously named Yelton's Assisted Living, was also cited when one resident died after being scalded in a tub and another choked to death on a Spam sandwich. The state fined the home after those deaths, and had fined it before but never forced it to close.

Ryan said the state has asked for documentation of conditions described in Wasson's letter. Problems described include insufficient food and mingling of adult-care residents with patients who have mental illness, who are housed in adjacent trailers operated by the Unique Living management.

In addition, financial problems at the center have resulted in utilities being disconnected, Wasson's letter said.

Ryan said she expects the division to decide whether to take the facility over within a "very short time frame."

In March 2005, owners Joan and Donald Yelton shut down the business, but kept ownership of the land it sits on. Their former programming director, their son and his longtime girlfriend rented the property from them and opened a new adult-care center there the same day. The new owners changed the name to Unique Living and hired the Arizona management company.

(Greg Lacour of the Charlotte Observer contributed to this report.)

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