Two Iowa caregivers accused of failing to protect elderly Iowans who froze to death on their watch are now facing very different consequences.
One of the workers has been criminally charged with second-degree murder and faces up to 50 years of imprisonment if convicted, while the other is facing no criminal charges and has been allowed to keep her nursing license.
The murder charge is highly unusual for a case involving a care-facility worker accused of neglect.
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“I can’t say definitively that the state has never charged anyone with second-degree murder in these circumstances, but if they have, I am not aware of it,” said Matthew S. Sheeley, an assistant state public defender who is working the case.
“The two resident deaths were tragic and avoidable,” said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney for the nonprofit Center for Medicare Advocacy and a nationally recognized expert in senior care. “Many people in each facility are responsible and should be held accountable for their obvious failures to keep the residents safe.”
“Every Iowan should be concerned about these tragic deaths,” said John Hale, a consultant and advocate for older Iowans. He said while Iowans should insist on justice for the families involved, “all too often, it’s the direct-care staff members that get blamed for these tragedies — and in some cases, that may be warranted if they failed to act when they could have.”
He said in many cases, facilities have a lack of sufficient staff, provide scant training, or use temporary workers who are not familiar with residents or the facility’s procedures. “When those additional factors exist, the responsibility for tragedies goes beyond the direct care staff on duty — it also goes to supervisory staff, facility management, facility owners and corporate directors,” he said.
The first of the two cases involves 95-year-old Elaine Creasey, who on Dec. 9, 2021, froze to death outside Keelson Harbour assisted living center in Spirit Lake. The second case involves 77-year-old Lynne Harriet Stewart, a former state social worker who froze to death on Jan. 21, 2022, outside Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing in Bondurant.
According to state records, Creasey wandered from her room at Keelson Harbour and exited the building shortly after 10 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2021. Because Creasey was known to wander, the staff was instructed to perform hourly, visual checks on her, and the exit door was equipped with an alarm to alert the staff in case someone left the building.
But, according to state records, the temp-agency worker who was assigned to check on Creasey during the night — identified in Board of Nursing records as registered nurse Brooke Arndt of Lake Park — repeatedly failed to confirm Arndt was in her room and didn’t investigate the cause of the door alarm.
With Creasey outside, a short distance from the exit door that had locked behind her, the temperature dropped to a wind chill of 14 degrees.
About 7 a.m. the next day, a worker went to Creasey’s room to check on her and noticed she was not in her apartment. A search was initiated and within a half-hour, employees found her unresponsive, lying on the ground outside the facility’s memory care unit.
The staff summoned an ambulance that transported Creasey to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The medical examiner later reported that his findings of hypothermia due to exposure were consistent with Creasey having exited the building about 10 p.m. the previous day.
According to state inspectors, Arndt told investigators she had performed all of the required visual safety checks on Creasey between midnight and 5 a.m., although, she added, she had not been trained on how to perform such checks.
She reportedly told the inspectors that when she performed bed checks, she would open the door to a resident’s room, leave the light off, walk in a few steps and look for a silhouette of the resident in bed. She allegedly reported that she thought she had seen Creasey in bed each time she checked her room that night.
A review of the door-alarm system at Keelson Harbour allegedly showed the alarm had sounded at 10:07 p.m., indicating someone had exited the building, and was shut off and reset by the staff nine minutes later.
When interviewed, Arndt allegedly told inspectors that she had silenced the door alarm without checking on the residents or searching the area to see who might have left the building. Another worker at the home had told her not to worry about it, she said.
Arndt also stated she was not sure what the door alarm signified or what had triggered it, inspectors later reported, and alleged she had not received any training on emergencies and door alarms.
The state inspections department fined Keelson Harbour $10,000 for staff-training violations. Arndt was not criminally charged, but the Iowa Board of Nursing charged her with committing an act that “causes injury” to a patient and with failure to properly assess, evaluate or accurately document a patient’s status.
As part of a settlement agreement, the board placed Arndt’s license on one year of probation and required her to complete 30 hours of additional professional education.
Creasey’s family is now suing both Keelson Harbour and the temp agency that employed Arndt, accusing them of negligence and reckless disregard for another’s safety. The two companies deny any wrongdoing, and a trial is scheduled for Aug. 15, 2023.
The family has alleged Creasey’s hands and knees were covered in abrasions when she was found, indicating “that she had been crawling around in the cold outside for some time.” They say Creasey “suffered immensely, both physically and mentally, before she passed away.”
This article was first published in Iowa Capital Dispatch.
One of the workers has been criminally charged with second-degree murder and faces up to 50 years of imprisonment if convicted, while the other is facing no criminal charges and has been allowed to keep her nursing license.
The murder charge is highly unusual for a case involving a care-facility worker accused of neglect.
Advertisement
“I can’t say definitively that the state has never charged anyone with second-degree murder in these circumstances, but if they have, I am not aware of it,” said Matthew S. Sheeley, an assistant state public defender who is working the case.
“The two resident deaths were tragic and avoidable,” said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney for the nonprofit Center for Medicare Advocacy and a nationally recognized expert in senior care. “Many people in each facility are responsible and should be held accountable for their obvious failures to keep the residents safe.”
“Every Iowan should be concerned about these tragic deaths,” said John Hale, a consultant and advocate for older Iowans. He said while Iowans should insist on justice for the families involved, “all too often, it’s the direct-care staff members that get blamed for these tragedies — and in some cases, that may be warranted if they failed to act when they could have.”
He said in many cases, facilities have a lack of sufficient staff, provide scant training, or use temporary workers who are not familiar with residents or the facility’s procedures. “When those additional factors exist, the responsibility for tragedies goes beyond the direct care staff on duty — it also goes to supervisory staff, facility management, facility owners and corporate directors,” he said.
The first of the two cases involves 95-year-old Elaine Creasey, who on Dec. 9, 2021, froze to death outside Keelson Harbour assisted living center in Spirit Lake. The second case involves 77-year-old Lynne Harriet Stewart, a former state social worker who froze to death on Jan. 21, 2022, outside Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing in Bondurant.
According to state records, Creasey wandered from her room at Keelson Harbour and exited the building shortly after 10 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2021. Because Creasey was known to wander, the staff was instructed to perform hourly, visual checks on her, and the exit door was equipped with an alarm to alert the staff in case someone left the building.
But, according to state records, the temp-agency worker who was assigned to check on Creasey during the night — identified in Board of Nursing records as registered nurse Brooke Arndt of Lake Park — repeatedly failed to confirm Arndt was in her room and didn’t investigate the cause of the door alarm.
With Creasey outside, a short distance from the exit door that had locked behind her, the temperature dropped to a wind chill of 14 degrees.
About 7 a.m. the next day, a worker went to Creasey’s room to check on her and noticed she was not in her apartment. A search was initiated and within a half-hour, employees found her unresponsive, lying on the ground outside the facility’s memory care unit.
The staff summoned an ambulance that transported Creasey to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The medical examiner later reported that his findings of hypothermia due to exposure were consistent with Creasey having exited the building about 10 p.m. the previous day.
Nurse: I wasn’t trained on bed checks
According to state inspectors, Arndt told investigators she had performed all of the required visual safety checks on Creasey between midnight and 5 a.m., although, she added, she had not been trained on how to perform such checks.
She reportedly told the inspectors that when she performed bed checks, she would open the door to a resident’s room, leave the light off, walk in a few steps and look for a silhouette of the resident in bed. She allegedly reported that she thought she had seen Creasey in bed each time she checked her room that night.
A review of the door-alarm system at Keelson Harbour allegedly showed the alarm had sounded at 10:07 p.m., indicating someone had exited the building, and was shut off and reset by the staff nine minutes later.
When interviewed, Arndt allegedly told inspectors that she had silenced the door alarm without checking on the residents or searching the area to see who might have left the building. Another worker at the home had told her not to worry about it, she said.
Arndt also stated she was not sure what the door alarm signified or what had triggered it, inspectors later reported, and alleged she had not received any training on emergencies and door alarms.
The state inspections department fined Keelson Harbour $10,000 for staff-training violations. Arndt was not criminally charged, but the Iowa Board of Nursing charged her with committing an act that “causes injury” to a patient and with failure to properly assess, evaluate or accurately document a patient’s status.
As part of a settlement agreement, the board placed Arndt’s license on one year of probation and required her to complete 30 hours of additional professional education.
Creasey’s family is now suing both Keelson Harbour and the temp agency that employed Arndt, accusing them of negligence and reckless disregard for another’s safety. The two companies deny any wrongdoing, and a trial is scheduled for Aug. 15, 2023.
The family has alleged Creasey’s hands and knees were covered in abrasions when she was found, indicating “that she had been crawling around in the cold outside for some time.” They say Creasey “suffered immensely, both physically and mentally, before she passed away.”
This article was first published in Iowa Capital Dispatch.