CNA arrested for negligent homicide and cover up
The Chattanooga Free Times Press had an article about the arrest of a nursing home employee who neglected and caused the death of a nursing home resident. Walter Small is charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of Robert A. Young on Nov. 12, 2007. The nursing home was almost successful covering this crime up. The arrest was made in connection with the 2007 homicide of a cerebral palsy patient, a case that almost ended with no investigation into the victim’s unexpected death and his burial just days later in a pauper’s grave.
A timeline of the case reveals it was Mr. Young’s family members who initially questioned the circumstances of his death, which took place while he was living at the Health Center at Standifer Place. Authorities eventually exhumed Mr. Young’s body last summer, and the autopsy performed one year after his death indicated Mr. Young died of blunt force trauma to the head.
County Medical Examiner Frank King said he did not initially perform an autopsy because of representations made to him that the victim had fallen and fractured his skull as the result of a seizure. But medical records didn’t support that theory, Dr. King said, and Mr. Young’s sister, Rana Reynolds, would end up suing Standifer Place as well as the Tennessee Department of Human Services in November 2008, alleging that both were in “collusion” to “hide the death and burial” of Mr. Young.
According to the two lawsuits filed in Hamilton County Circuit Court, not only did a Standifer Place employee kill Mr. Young, but when family members called to check up on him, employees didn’t even tell the family he was dead for more than a month. After Mr. Young’s death, “Standifer Place told each person, on each call, that (Mr. Young) was OK, and to come see him,” court documents state.
