Elizabeth A. Drake (left) appears in court with her attorney for her sentencing (Brown County Court via WLUK).
A Wisconsin woman who told police that she deliberately ignored her mother”s cries for help while letting her lay in filth has been sentenced for abuse.
Court records revealed that Elizabeth A. Drake, 40, pleaded no contest to one count of intentionally subjecting an individual at risk to abuse and one count of improper animal shelter on Monday. Drake was arrested in December 2023 after a delivery driver who came to the house she shared with her 72-year-old mother heard the older woman “yelling for help,” according to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime.
Police arrived to find a scene that was so filthy that the officer who wrote the complaint stated “[I] felt that I may vomit.”
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According to the criminal complaint, police responded to Drake’s home on Dec. 13, 2023, after a delivery driver called police saying that she heard “an elderly lady banging on windows, yelling for help and to call the police.” As Green Bay Police Department officers approached the home, Drake was on the front porch. She told the police that her mother was fine. When one officer told her they would need to see for themselves, Drake informed them that her mother’s room was “messy.”
Officers entered the heavily cluttered home, which had a “very obnoxious smell” and had a mattress covered in blankets on the floor. The smell was described as “animal, garbage, urine, and feces.” Rather than walk on the floor, officers had to walk on the mattress. Officers observed “bugs all over the home.”
Drake told them that her mother was in the bedroom.
Upon entering the bedroom, officers were not able to put eyes on the older woman “due to the amount of garbage and other items in the room.” Some of those items included “soiled diapers, garbage, clothes, pop cans and other miscellaneous items,” according to the complaint. But Drake’s mother responded to their assurance that they were there to help her by saying that her daughter was “holding her prison[er] and she wanted to get out of the house.”
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Once officers got a closer look at Drake’s mother, they saw “she had bed sores, urine material stuck to her hair, and what looked to be bug droppings on her.” She told the police that after a fall a year prior that left her with a broken leg, Drake was “supposed to take care of her.” But she said that she had not been moved from the bed to bathe or use the bathroom for “at least a year.”
According to police, Drake acknowledged that the home was in “terrible condition.” She also told police that her mother “chose” to live in the conditions in which she was found. Police arrested her at the scene and put her in a squad car, at which point she said she wanted an attorney.
Police said she continued to talk, telling them that she “ignores her mom’s cries for help due to it bugging her” while she runs a local crime blog called Green Bay Crime Reports. That website has since been taken down, but not before Drake wrote about her arrest. She also ran a Green Bay Crime Reports Facebook page, which local Fox affiliate WLUK reported had around 164,000 followers. As of Monday, the page had 158,000 followers.
Drake told police that she had considered “adding sound proofing material” to her mother’s bedroom window so no one could hear her screaming for help. She added that “she was happy this happened” so her mother could be removed from her care.
Drake was sentenced to one year in prison plus nine months in jail, as well as three years of extended supervision. She was ordered not to have any contact with her mother.
