Background: The Pensacola, Fla., neighborhood where Pamela Reynolds lived with her father (Google Maps). Inset: Pamela Reynolds (Escambia County Sheriff”s Office).
A Florida woman was arrested for elder abuse after she took her father to the hospital, where he was found to be covered in human waste and maggots, police say.
Pamela Reynolds, 54, told police that she was her elderly father’s caregiver when they questioned her at the hospital as he was being treated for several serious health concerns. According to an arrest report reviewed by Law&Crime, police said that Reynolds’ father, whose age was not provided, suffered from several health problems, including diabetes and heart failure.
When police spoke to hospital employees who treated the man, they said he was suffering from necrosis, was covered in feces, and was “severely malnourished.” Reynolds told police she had not moved her father from his recliner for two months.
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According to the arrest report, Reynolds’ father had been treated for his injuries and cleaned by the time police arrived. When police arrived at the hospital and saw him in the intensive care unit, the responding officer said, “I could smell decaying flesh” coming from the alleged victim. The man was “unable to move himself,” and the officer noted several injuries to his body as he was being photographed by crime scene technicians. One injury was allegedly “the size of a softball with black and yellow tissue, pus, and fluids coming out.”
Medical staff who treated the man told police that his right hip injury had become necrotic; when he arrived, the wound contained “maggots and feces.”
When police questioned Reynolds, she told them that she regularly bathed her father with “soap and water” and gave him food and medicine while in her care. She allegedly said that she had not taken her father to the doctor since January and had not moved him from the recliner since early June “because of transportation issues.” Reynolds allegedly told police that “she did not see or was not aware” of the injuries on her father.
More from Law&Crime: ‘She is fine’: Daughter left 82-year-old mother stuck to mattress with feces-covered sheets, causing the elderly woman’s death, cops say
Reynolds told police that after a failed attempt to bring her father to the hospital in April, she finally called 911 on July 31 when she noticed he had a “high heart rate.”
According to the report, police were able to communicate with the older man, who appeared to be “cognitively aware” of why he was in the hospital. He was able to tell police that “he had been lying in the chair for several months.”
Reynolds, who reportedly cried during her interview with police, was arrested on Aug. 4 on one count of neglect of an elderly or disabled adult with great bodily harm. She was booked into the Escambia County Jail, where she is being held on $10,000 bond. Her arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 22.
