A man who previously owned an assisted living facility has been sentenced to three years in prison for neglecting a resident who fell through a hole in the floor and now is unable to walk.
Dickson Oben Tabi of Silver Spring, MD, pleaded guilty to the charges in September, and was sentenced by Washington County Circuit Court Judge M. Kenneth Long Jr. on Monday, according to local reports.
In August 2012, an elderly woman with dementia fell nine feet from the second-floor bathroom to a dining room in the Soma Manor House facility in Boonsboro, MD, the charges stated.
At the sentencing, the judge said he understood how Tabi might have left the bathroom door unlocked, even though work was being done and the room was unsafe, reported local newspaper the Herald Mail. The judge said he could not excuse Tabi’s subsequent decision to carry the woman to bed, repair the structural damage, and attempt a cover-up. Tabi initially told authorities that he did not know how the woman, 84-year-old Eileen Rindone, came to be sprawled on the dining room floor, and said he did not notice she was injured.
Rindone, now 85, broke her pelvis, ankle and ribs in the fall, and injured her head, according to the Herald Mail. She now lives in a nursing home near Hagerstown.
In addition to his prison sentence, Tabi must pay Rindone more than $14,500 in restitution, the Herald Mail reported.
