Home health aide finds 86-year-old on floor, leaves him there as he dies, Florida cops say
A home health care aide didn’t call for help when she found an 86-year-old man on the floor, then she went back to sleep and he died, Florida authorities said.
Beatrice Taylor, 25, is now charged with “aggravated manslaughter of an elderly person,” the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a Sept. 30 news release.
Her attorney information was not available in Polk County records Sept. 30.
Taylor had been working as a licensed home health aide for Assisting Hands Home Health Care for eight months and was assigned to a couple’s home in Winter Haven, according to the sheriff’s office.
Assisting Hands Home Health Care did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News. The company fired Taylor, according to the sheriff’s office.
The 86-year-old man she was providing care for had congestive heart failure and started receiving hospice services the day before her Aug. 15 shift, deputies said.
Taylor was also supposed to care for the man’s wife, who had dementia and was “not cognitive,” according to court documents.
When Taylor showed up for her 12-hour overnight shift and relieved the daytime aide, deputies said she “immediately” fell asleep in the living room, which was not allowed while she was on the clock, according to the sheriff’s office.
At about 1 a.m. Aug 16, she woke up to a thud in the bedroom and went to check on the man, deputies said. She found him alive, lying on his side on the floor with his head between the bed and the nightstand, investigators said. But she said when she tried to help him, he told her not to touch him, so she left the room, according to deputies.
She ignored company policy to call 911 or her employer when a patient falls, then she fell back asleep for a few hours, detectives said.
When she woke up again, she called her parents and talked to them for over a half hour before she went to check on the man and found him unconscious, according to investigators.
Her parents advised her to call 911, then she hung up with them, called her company and then called 911 at about 5:37 a.m., deputies said.
The medical examiner determined the man died from “positional asphyxia with a contributory cause of pre-existing health issues,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Information from the man’s pacemaker confirmed he was alive when Taylor first found him at 1 a.m. The medical examiner said if Taylor had called 911 then, he would have lived.
She told investigators she “didn’t kill that man” and hadn’t done anything wrong, deputies said.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd called her initial response “egregious.”
“I believe someone who was not even being paid to look after this elderly man would have immediately dialed 9-1-1 under these circumstances,” he said in the release.
Taylor was arrested Sept. 26, deputies said.
Winter Haven is about a 50-mile drive east from Tampa.
This story was originally published September 30, 2024 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Home health aide finds 86-year-old on floor, leaves him there as he dies, Florida cops say."