A disabled man admitted that he had poisoned other residents of his care facility, leading to a full-on investigation about several people who’d been taken to the hospital in previous months.
A call from workers at King’s Daughter Medical Center started the investigation. Workers told 9-1-1 that a 62-year-old residential care patient with developmental and physical disabilities had told them he’d been putting soap and cleaners into other residents’ drinks.
When an investigator from the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office spoke to him and asked whose drinks he’d put soap in, the man said he’d been putting them in everybody’s drinks.
His casework told the officer that multiple residents had been hospitalized with severe gastric issues recently and that they were attempting to contact the guardians of those patients.
The facility also put together a list of patients who had been ill recently, along with their symptoms.
Officers returned to the facility a few days later, when the guardian of a patient contacted them to say the facility had called her about a series of unsolved assaults. She said staff told her they’d had a series of unsolved assaults and had just determined the man who confessed to the poisonings had been attacking his fellow patients.
The staff had noted many patients with unexplained bruising and had just discovered who was responsible. The concerned guardian noted her relative was defenseless in a wheelchair. Deputies took pictures of the bruising and information for a report.
