BY KELLY GILLESPIE
AND JAMIE DURANT
MEDIA GENERAL CAROLINA
March 9, 2009
A 97-year-old Marion woman is in critical condition at an area hospital and her granddaughter has been arrested Monday after years of neglect, according to Marion Police Department reports.
Valeria B. Lemon, 54, of 402 Waverly Way, Marion turned herself in to police just before 3 p.m. and is charged with elder neglect, Lt. Farmer Blue said.
Lemon was arraigned on the charge Monday afternoon and released on a $10,000 bond, Blue said.
Blue said Lemon made the original call Thursday to 911 on behalf of her grandmother.
“EMS responded to the house due to her not being able to keep food down,” he said.
Once EMS arrived at the home, they took the elderly woman to an area hospital and contacted the state Department of Social Services, which in turn notified the police department, Blue said.
“When we saw the victim, she had some bad bedsores on her buttocks,” he said. “One of them was really major. You could actually see her bones, it was kind of large. They had to literally cut the sock off her foot. She had dead skin and stuff falling off the bottom of her feet.”
Blue said surgery will be needed to repair the damage from the bedsores to the victim’s buttocks and foot, but it all could have been prevented.
“The granddaughter, the only excuse she could offer was that her grandmother wasn’t in her right mind, and she couldn’t do anything to move and she wanted to do what she wanted to do,” he said.
One of the victim’s legs had to be amputated and she’s recovering in the intensive care unit, Blue said.
“(It was) neglect of the granddaughter to provide the care that she needed,” he said. “She did not take her to the hospital, not turn her over properly. I don’t think she had been turned over for a while. The granddaughter admitted to us that she had not been to the doctor for two or three years and she’s 97 years old.”
Another extreme case of alleged elder abuse reported in the Pee Dee a year ago resulted in the arrest of three people and a lawsuit against the state DSS.
Police said Marry Lee Sims Terry, 62, and her 82-year-old mother, Pelham Sims, were found starving in their Darlington home in late January 2008.
Timothy Sims, 48, and his cousin Les Williams, 54, both of 402 Second St. in Darlington where the women were living, each were arrested within days of the women being hospitalized and charged with two counts of abuse of a vulnerable adult.
After Terry’s death Feb. 13, one of the counts was upgraded to a higher statute of abuse of a vulnerable adult, which is punishable by as many as 30 years in prison, instead of just 15, Darlington Police Capt. Danny Watson said in a previous interview.
The men are expected to stand trial this summer, according to the 4th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
Terry’s brother, Clarence Sims, and Andrew Gurley are named as plaintiffs and the personal representatives of Terry’s estate in the lawsuit filed March 10, 2008, against DSS that also named DSS case workers Lisa Gibson and Ada Antoine as defendants. The lawsuit that alleges DSS case workers witnessed Terry starving to death and did nothing to save her. DSS has denied the allegations.
Gibson, 39, of 105 Pettigrew St. in Lamar was arrested March 14 and faces a misdemeanor charge of failure to report the abuse or neglect of a vulnerable adult in connection with the case. The status of the case against her wasn’t available by press time Monday.
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