Last fall, Alabama filed a lawsuit against an unlicensed assisted living facility located in a group of mobile homes, where nine elderly and disabled residents lived. In late April, a massive tornado outbreak killed four of those residents.
The state lawsuit was filed after investigators received a complaint about care at Shoal Creek Valley Assisted Living and discovered the facility wasn’t licensed, according to the Associated Press. Last summer, two Alabama Department of Public Health nurses found nine residents, eight of whom had Alzheimer’s, living in two doublewide mobile homes.
The facility owner, Ronnie Isbell, his daughter-in-law and 7-year-old granddaughter were among the dead after tornadoes — which killed more than 200 people statewide — swept through Alabama on April 27. A judge recently dismissed the state’s lawsuit against Shoal Creek, citing Isbell’s death, but legal challenges remain. A family member of a former resident is suing over the care his mother received at the facility. He said he plans to pursue his neglect lawsuit against Isbell’s estate. A defense attorney maintains it is impossible to determine whether the residents died simply because they were housed in a mobile home.
