MARYSVILLE — The owner of a shuttered adult family home in Marysville has been sentenced to 90 days of electronic home monitoring after stealing from residents and neglecting them.
Savitri Devi, of Covington, was charged with six counts of reckless endangerment and four counts of theft. While a trial was set for late August, she pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree theft and one count of reckless endangerment in July. She was sentenced in August.
For the theft offense, a felony, she will spend 90 days on electronic home monitoring. Devi is allowed to leave her house for 30 minutes but must stay within one mile of the residence. For reckless endangerment, a gross misdemeanor, she got a nearly one-year suspended sentence. Devi will not spend time in jail for the crime as long as she doesn’t break any more laws in the next year.
Abode Senior Care in early 2018 had six residents, some of whom needed constant help from caregivers. Instead, the home neglected them, according to investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office Medicaid Fraud Control Division. Residents were found covered in their own urine and suffered skin breakdowns. In one case, a resident sat in their own feces for an extended period of time, investigators wrote.
Not only was there not enough staff to care for the residents, the workers that were employed were reportedly sometimes unlicensed or hadn’t gone through appropriate background checks. Devi was “very remorseful” that she left residents in the care of an unlicensed worker, a social worker wrote in court documents.
Devi, 55, also stole or withheld over $30,000 from residents and their families between February and June 2018, according to the charges. Investigators alleged she withheld deposits and didn’t pro-rate rent after residents died or the facility closed. In one case, Devi asked a family to pay more to care for their relative, but no extra help was provided. They paid an extra $11,000.
Devi was ordered to pay almost $20,000 in restitution to three relatives of residents.
Two residents’ deaths were potentially preventable under the Devi-owned home’s care, investigators argued. In February 2018, a sore was found on one man’s back. Over the next 10 days, a nurse twice found him in a wet and soiled bed, according to court documents. He was also found lying on his ulcer in an immovable position. He was taken in May to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with sepsis. A few days later, the 71-year-old man died.
Another resident moved into the Marysville home in December 2017. The resident was taken to an emergency room in January 2018 for constipation. She was given medication and an enema kit in case the issues persisted. But even when the woman went nearly two weeks without a bowel movement, Abode had no documented history of getting her treatment, the May 2020 charges claimed.
By the end of March, the woman was put into hospice care. It wasn’t until then that a nurse discovered the resident had suffered skin breakdowns, according to court documents. And a hospice bath aid reported being appalled to find the woman in a pool of her own urine, on two separate days.
The resident died on April 11, 2018, four months after moving in.
That case is the subject of an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit brought by the woman’s family against Devi’s business partner. The lawsuit called the woman’s stay at Abode a “hellish nightmare.”
“Devi failed to provide an appropriate standard of care to residents at Abode,” investigators argued in court documents. “She failed to properly administer medications and did not take appropriate steps to monitor residents for skin breakdown.”
A caregiver called Devi a “very, very bad lady.” This worker gave examples of Devi’s physical and verbal abuse. When one resident fell out of bed, for example, she reportedly berated him, withheld breakfast and left him lying in soiled bedding.
The state shut down Abode in May 2018 after a Washington Department of Social and Health Services investigation.
This story has been revised to accurately identify the name of the adult family home in Marysville. It is Abode Senior Care.
Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @GoldsteinStreet.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
