By Robert Faturechi
May 26, 2010
A former caregiver who was convicted of torturing vulnerable residents at an upscale Calabasas retirement home is set to be sentenced Wednesday morning. The 21-year-old faces life in prison.
Cesar Ulloa often laughed as he attacked residents, some of whom were too dementia-ridden to call for help, witnesses said. A Van Nuys jury found him guilty on eight counts of torture and elder abuse in April.
During his trial, a former coworker testified that she saw the Reseda resident clench his right fist and punch a wheelchair-bound man in the stomach.
"Haven't you had enough?" former caregiver Luz Alvarez recalled Ulloa saying, laughing as the man gasped.
Ulloa was named employee of the month during his tenure at Silverado Senior Living, where he was responsible for bathing residents and escorting them around the facility. Relatives of residents pay upward of $70,000 a year to house their loved ones at the elite retirement home.
Silverado officials have denied any wrongdoing as an organization, though said they respected the jury’s guilty verdict for Ulloa.
Caregivers such as Ulloa, 19 at the time of the abuse, often took the floor with only a high school diploma and a few days of training. Though cameras were installed in the halls, there was no monitoring of caregivers in residents' rooms, a setup the prosecution alleged was ripe for abuse.
Coworkers recalled shocking stories of abuse during trial. In one instance, Ulloa body-slammed a mute 78-year-old woman like a professional wrestler. In another instance, he leaped off a dresser and landed both knees into an elderly man's abdomen.
They said he often taunted residents. In one case, he told a male patient he "was sexing his daughter."
Suspicions about Ulloa were spurred after a resident’s widow received an anonymous phone call in 2007 alerting her that her husband’s death was caused by abuse, not natural causes as the family had believed.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies retrieved the man’s body from the grave and found dozens of broken bones around his chest. A radiologist at trial compared the trauma to being hit by a train.
SOURCE: LATIMES BLOGS
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