Augusta Personal Care Home Operator Charged With Murder
Feb. 20--An Augusta woman arrested on Valentine's Day 2018, accused of operating unlicensed personal care homes, was indicted Tuesday on a felony murder charge in the death of a former resident at one of those homes.
Beverly Webb, 58, has been free on a $201,000 bond. At the time she was suspected of operating six or seven unlicensed personal homes, including one at 3025 Sprucewood Drive that came to the attention of the Crimes Against the Vulnerable and Elderly task force. Gold Cross employees called 911 after taking a disabled patient to the home and finding no one there to take care of the person, according to earlier reports in The Augusta Chronicle.
The indictment returned Tuesday by the Richmond County grand jury accuses Webb of felony murder in the September 2017 death of a man who lived at the Sprucewood Drive home. The man suffered a serious brain injury at birth that left him severely disabled and requiring 24-hour supervised care, according to a CAVE news release.
CAVE investigator William Loomer determined that Webb moved the man from a licensed facility and put him in the unlicensed personal care home on Sprucewood Drive without the knowledge of his family. Fifteen days later, he was found dead. He overdosed on his prescribed medication, which he had access to even though he was incapable of comprehending how much to take and when to take it, according to the news release.
Webb is accused of leaving the man with no supervision despite his inability to care for himself. She is charged with felony murder because she was responsible for his daily care and for leaving him in a home without supervision, which led to his death, according to the news release. She is also charged with neglect of a disabled adult.
The Sprucewood Drive home where CAVE members found four disabled adults alone was owned by a disabled woman whom Webb removed from a licensed personal care home and promised to care for in her own home, according to earlier reports in The Chronicle. From 2013 to 2018, five people died in the home. Webb allegedly applied for survivor disability payments after the death of one of those residents.
In a search of Webb's Comfort Road home, CAVE members removed 14 boxes of records that included documents concerning life insurance, medical care, personal identity papers and medications in the names of people who lived at her properties, according to the search warrant. Webb allegedly controlled their finances, held their benefit debit and food stamp cards, and added her name to the bank account of one resident, according to earlier Chronicle reports.
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