Background: Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrest Patience Jackson at her home in Colorado (Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office). Inset: Patience Jackson (Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office)
A Colorado health care worker is behind bars and another one is set to be after authorities accused them of elder abuse related to injuries suffered by a 92-year-old woman with “severe dementia.”
Patience Jackson, 33, was arrested at her home on Wednesday, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. She has been charged with criminal negligence, crimes against an at-risk person and complicity, all felonies. Zainab Namale, the other suspect, had an arrest warrant taken out against her and was given 24 hours to turn herself in, as she was in Miami, KDVR reported.
The investigation began on May 9, when a deputy from the sheriff’s office, referred to as “Investigator VanCleave,” arrived at Sky Ridge Medical Center over a report of elder abuse regarding the 92-year-old unnamed victim. According to the sheriff’s office, hospital employees were concerned because the woman had two separate broken bones in her lower leg — fractures in both her shinbone and calf bone.
The woman had reportedly been brought to the hospital the previous day from the Orchard Park Health Care Center, about eight miles away. However, the hospital employees told the investigator that the victim’s injuries “were not consistent” with those described in the rehab center’s report.
The report said no one knew what had happened — that the woman was found sitting in her wheelchair “screaming for help in terrible pain” and no one had seen her fall, the sheriff’s office noted. Multiple employees at the center attempted to explain how the injury occurred.
Jackson, a certified nursing assistant, and Namale, a licensed practical nurse, said the injury to the woman happened while she was sitting in her wheelchair, according to an affidavit obtained by KUSA. The director of nursing at the center reportedly added that the victim was injured while being moved from the wheelchair to her bed, with other employees saying the woman was known for “planting her feet” while being helped, which could have caused a twisting motion and the fractures.
Hospital staff remained unconvinced.
A surgeon reportedly said the injury was not a spiral fracture, such as the one the rehab center employees suggested, but rather a “clean break” in two break” in two places that couldn’t have occurred while she was in a wheelchair.
As the investigation proceeded, the investigator determined Jackson and Namale were “likely untruthful” about how the woman was injured. He also believed they “were complicit in their actions to hide the truth of what happened to the victim.”
Jackson was jailed in the Arapahoe County Detention Center on a $2,500 bond. It is unclear whether Namale was arrested by Thursday or is still wanted. The sheriff’s office added that the investigation remains active.
