https://www.mcknightsseniorliving.com/news/former-assisted-living-worker-sentenced-in-accidental-poisonings-that-led-to-resident-deaths-injury/
The case got pleaded down to a misdemeanor, which is why she serves whatever time remaining after her pretrial detention for pouring a drano like cleaner into serving pitchers that ended up being served to residents, killing two and injuring one. She was found guilty of this, and the sentence was less than 40 days.
Im sorry, but when do two people get fatally poisoned and a third gravely injured and all that happens is a couple weeks in jail when found guilty in court?
Not involved in the DA office. No idea the facts of this. Looks like you're saying this wasn't intentional murder with malice aforethought, BUT was the case of someone working with Draino/drains who then put this poisonous stuff in some sort of serving vessel, at which point someone ELSE/or the elder him/herself picked it up and ingested it?.
Yes, to be certain, that was one Hades of a Mistake.
Looks to me like the definition of "unintentional manslaughter".
I THINK theyd're saying it was a MISTAKE that took a life, just as you mentioned in the case of a drunk driver who takes a life--the person's dead, intentional or not. Hence unintentional manslaughter.
That it was pleaded down???? Like I said, I don't work in DA office, have no law degree, can't imagine how or why this happened.
Just saying I don't know.
And you are saying you DO know.
But the facts, no matter what WE do/don't know in this case, are what they are, and we can chalk this up to "another tragedy" in a world I find of late to be just chock full of not much other than man's inhumanity to man.
I have in my own home a partner, a kind kind kind man--who daily lives his life going through the news (always was a news junkie and I always was anything BUT) finding tragedies upon tragedies.
Like my Crime Junkies podcast it is a sort of odd entertainment (for want of a better word).
I have really had to stop the second hand reporting as I go about my daily life of library, dog walk, gardening, movies, reading, sewing, podcast, books on tape, etc.
I don't find that the regurgitating of tragedy after tragedy is something I can CURE at 83, and I do know it is something I don't want rubbed all over me like my daily slathering on of cetaphil lotion. I kind of choose when to do my own steeping in tragedy with my podcast.
I've lived trying to serve in a way I was good at, trying to be decent (if often misguided), of trying to pull the happiness out of human life (which I find a very mixed bag) where and when I can. It's been a life lived, for the most part, contented. Somehow I never saw the the world through rose colored glasses, but rather "through-a-glass-darkly". I have low expectations of humanity, and am therefore seldom shocked, and even sometimes delighted that we aren't so bad as I think we are! Pessimism has its perks. I recommend it as overall philosophy with a dollop of hope thrown in. I am perhaps a "Stoic" more than anything else.
On our Forum I would say we are kind of steeped often enough in "bad-things-happen". They do! This awful story of the Draino and the elders is pretty horrific. Will await my Crime Junkies exloration of it and hope for more information about how such a thing could happen.
Nothing we think or do will bring those lives back. And every day, all around us, these tragedies play out. It's either the human condition, OR I listen to too much Crime Junkies on podcast.
I don't spend a whole lot of time in outrage.
I find it helps nothing. It changes nothing. I do spend a lot of time in "wonder". Not wonder as in "wonderful" but wonder as in "wonderING". Wondering how, why, wherefore.
San Francisco, by the by, had another quite viral-infamous thing happen in the not so distant past. A woman driver who mowed down pretty much an entire family who was waiting at a bus stop. And the controversy here was enormous. Those who wanted her to get the death penalty because--you know--all the DEATH she caused. Those who said "She was impaired by (you name it but mostly they thought age)" and therefore not responsible. Like you said, Peggy Sue...............PEOPLE DEAD. And nothing happening to her.
And once again. I don't know. I just don't know the facts well enough. I just don't know.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/bay-area-care-home-worker-jail-21215299.php
Mendoza was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and three counts of elder abuse. She pleaded no contest to felony elder abuse, avoiding a trial at the last minute. A San Mateo County Superior Court judge sentenced her to 40 days in a county jail and 350 hours of community service.
Obviously she allocated to a felony, Alva, and obviously the whole thing was caught on video. As an older person or taking care of one as most of us are, the fact that the ending of two lives was adjudicated by a judge who decided against DA advice of two years that a mere 40 days is sufficient. Even getting that much was two years of denialism and gaslighting from all involved.
Caregivers should know enough to not pour drano that looks like juice into juice pitchers and then walk away, just as much as I know not to get behind the wheel drunk.
She is on video pouring drano exactly the color of their juice and leaving it on the counter during breakfast prep. She has allocated to the video with the argument being that…shyt happens but she definitely didn’t try to kill those people. Im sorry but disagree as two people are now dead and the third is “at a higher level of care.”
I doubt there's any way we can know what truly happened here. We have the charges and what resulted is basically a dismissal of them all.
https://www.cpmlegal.com/media/news/15118_2022-09-29%20COMPLAINT%20FOR%20DAMAGES%20-%20FILED.pdf#xd_co_f=NjI0NTc3NmMtYzlhNi00ZjQ5LWJkNDAtMzFiYTdhNjgyMTY4~