Violence against seniors on the rise
More financial scams, brutal crimes reported; observers fault poor economy
Doug Guthrie and Charles E. Ramirez
The Detroit News
February 17, 2009
Eastpointe widow Joann Hornberger, 77, rented an upstairs bedroom to a 43-year-old boarder because she needed the money and help around the house.
On June 6, 2007, the man came home drunk, beat Hornberger and tried to smother her with a pillow. He shot up the house, terrorizing her until dawn. Friends found Hornberger battered but alive.
"It was a nightmare," said Hornberger, who is sharing her experience as a volunteer at local senior centers. "I had known him for about four years ... I thought he could stay with me and maybe do some odds and ends around the house."
Fraud and violence against the elderly are on the rise throughout Metro Detroit, according to law enforcement and advocates for senior citizens.
"It's stunning, the level of violence we are beginning to see," said Thomas Wenzel, principal Wayne County prosecutor for elder abuse.
Examples abound throughout Metro Detroit:
• Police are circulating photos from surveillance cameras in Southgate and Lincoln Park, where an 86-year-old woman's credit cards were used to buy furniture, clothing and a microwave. The victim was bruised when a purse-snatcher threw her to the asphalt in a Taylor grocery store parking lot on Jan. 11. Her attacker was a young woman.
• Gregory Nathaniel Wayne, 32, is awaiting trial on charges of torture for binding, beating, kicking and choking a Detroit couple in their 80s on Nov. 7 while allegedly demanding to know where money might be hidden in their home. The man was duct-taped to a chair and tossed down the basement stairs. The woman was stomped into a coma.
• A Livonia woman was sentenced Thursday to 23 to 40 years for killing her 82-year-old mother by shoving her down the basement steps last March. Mary Beth Connolly, 49, had been caring for her medically fragile mother, Betty Connolly. Authorities say the daughter had been siphoning funds from mom's bank accounts. Betty Connolly died from a broken neck and head injuries.
• William Blanchard, 80, survived being bound, beaten and robbed in his Harper Woods home last year, but he died from unrelated causes last October, a month before one of his two attackers was set for trial. The man eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was sentenced last month to eight to 20 years.
• Shirley Cowan, 76, of River Rouge was strangled and her throat was slit last summer in her home by a handyman who had been the son of her best friend. Cowan withdrew $2,000 from her bank account the day before her death. Her killer spent days after the slaying on a drug binge in a motel room. The money never was recovered.
Faunce said law enforcement officers in Warren now are warning seniors about predators posing as water department workers who force their way inside.
Abridged
SOURCE: DetNews.com
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