Nursing home worker indicted, charged with abusing a patient
A former worker in the Wood Glen Alzheimer’s Community in Miami Twp. was indicted Thursday in the beating of an elderly patient who died two months later.
Vanesha A. Rice, 24, of Dayton was indicted by a grand jury and charged with patient abuse, a fourth-degree felony, after a Jan. 25 incident. Rice has been issued a summons to appear June 6. No attorney is listed for Rice in court records.
Photos provided by the family of John D. Sexton, of Germantown, showed bruising to both sides’ of Sexton’s face. Medical reports indicated bones around Sexton’s eyes were fractured, according to Sexton’s attorney.
“I just want justice for my dad,” said Meg Sexton, her voice cracking during a phone call from her home in Tennessee. “Dad died 56 days after she beat him. We had to change his environment, which that’s not good with an Alzheimer’s patient.
“We did not want him going back to Wood Glen. The biggest thing was his eyes were filled with fear. ... (Rice) made the last 56 days of his life hell.”
Meg said about a week before her father died, she told him she would wash his face.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Beat me?’ Can you imagine the man, how he felt, how scared he was?” she said. “No matter what they do to her is not ... going to give him that peace that he should have had those last months of his life.”
A statement to police by Rice provided to Sexton’s family refers to the employee being “overworked and tired” and that she “backhanded” Sexton “trying to protect myself.”
“The family is relieved the criminal justice system is taking this abuse of an elderly person seriously,” Sexton family attorney Craig Matthews said Thursday. “However, the nursing home also must be held fully accountable for what their employee did, and we intend to make sure that happens.”
Meg Sexton said she worked in the medical field for 26 years.
“I have been spit on, I have been pinched, I’ve been hit and everything,” she said. “And you don’t hit a patient. You walk away.”
Rice was previously not named because she had not been formally charged.
Rices’ statement later was modified to say she hit Sexton twice with a closed fist, according to an Ohio Department of Health document.
The Ohio Department of Health report indicates Rice worked at Wood Glen at 3800 Summit Glen Drive from Oct. 30, 2018, until Jan. 25, 2019, and that she was in good standing with the Nurse Aide Registry.
Rice’s statement to police — dated Feb. 28, more than a month after the incident — said Sexton became combative and was swinging wildly at her, and she backhanded him to protect herself. Rice was terminated that same day, according to the state report.
“I am so sorry because he didn’t deserve that,” Rice’s statement read. “I was overworked and tired and made a mistake.” She also said she “didn’t mean to hurt him at all” and that she’s “not a monster.”
A March 22 Ohio Department of Health Deficiency Report found that Wood Glen “failed to ensure a resident was free from staff to resident physical abuse during the provision of care.”
Meg said a conviction would mean Rice couldn’t hurt another patient. “She’ll never be able to work in the medical field again and be able to do this to someone else,” Sexton said. “If that’s her temperament, she doesn’t need to be in this field.”