Mother Testifies in Group Home Death Case -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BY THOMAS DAIL: Staff Writer for The Pilot
The mother of a woman who died last year after living in a group home took the stand Thursday afternoon in the trial of an employee charged in connection with her death.
Showanda McKoy, a former employee of a Preferred Alternatives group home in Aberdeen, was charged with felonious patient abuse and neglect after Mary Lynnette Martin, the group home’s sole resident, died last December.
Martin had been in a coma since the morning of Oct. 27, 1999, when she was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. McKoy was the only employee at the home with Martin from 11:05 p.m. on Oct. 26 until she was taken to the hospital the next morning.
Ileine Morris, Martin’s mother, told the jury that the last time she saw her daughter before she was taken to the hospital was on Oct. 25. She testified that Martin had a small mark on her right cheek and a dime-sized rug burn on her right shoulder.
At the hospital 37 hours later, Martin had a black eye and bruises all over her body and face, she said as tears welled up in her eyes. The area behind Martin’s left ear was swollen and her ear had blood in it, Morris testified.
Martin would have been 26 years old in December. Morris said that Martin went into an emotional downtown in 1989 when she was molested at the age of 14. She had spent time in treatment at Dorthea Dix, her parent’s house and various residential treatment settings.
In 1993, Martin was named to the Thomas S. class, Morris testified. As specified in a federal lawsuit, Thomas S. class members have a dual diagnosis, usually a mental health disorder and a developmental disability.
Thomas S. class members spent time at a state-run hospital, like Dix, in the 1980s. Last year, a federal court released the state from its control in treating class members. Class members received one-on-one treatment in community residential programs and were given input in their treatment plan.
Before Preferred Alternatives set up a group home for Martin, she asked Neal Guy, administrator of the Fayetteville-based group home contractor, that no one “hurt her like in the other places,” Morris testified.
“She looked to him as an authority figure,” she said.
Martin’s repeated pleas to speak with Guy were a “sign for help,” said Morris. She told the jury that she kept Martin’s home stocked with paper plates and cups because of her prior experiences in group homes.
“You would go into these places and the sink would be full of dishes and the client would have to get a dirty cup out of the sink and drink from that,” she said.
During the afternoon on Oct. 27, 1999, Morris testified that she returned to the group home after going to the hospital and saw that a pair of Martin’s pajama’s had been partially soiled with vomit. Dorothy Blue, the last group home employee to leave after McKoy had begun her shift, testified Wednesday that she had put the pajamas on Martin before leaving.
Morris also testified that she later found Martin’s favorite stuffed animal, a cloth rat named Mama Cheese, soiled with vomit.
Weeks later, she was in the home, gathering some of Martin’s belongings when something told her to look underneath the mattress, she testified. The top underside of the mattress had been soiled with vomit, as well. Something else struck her eye — Martin’s white copy of The Bible, laid on the middle of the box spring.
During two days of prior testimony about “adverse incident report” forms and “behavior symptom tracking” sheets, nothing in any account of what had happened at the house in the three days prior to Martin being injured mentioned anything about Martin vomiting.
Aberdeen Police Detective Dan Wilson, who testified after Morris, told the jury that he was with Morris and her husband when they first went to the home on Oct. 27. He found that the vomit on Martin’s pajamas was still damp. He also testified that the bathroom floor and carpet in the hall and bedroom were dry.
According to McKoy’s adverse incident report form and a written statement, Martin got into the shower wearing her pajamas on the night before she went into the hospital. According to the report, Martin was having “behaviors.” She wrote that Martin had thrown feces at her, but missed and hit the kitchen floor.
Wilson testified to finding no evidence of feces on the kitchen floor.
During his investigating into Martin’s injuries, Wilson said he later found an adverse incident report form balled up in the group home’s kitchen trash can. McKoy had filled out the form. She later turned in another form detailing the incidents of the morning of Oct. 27, 1999. A picture he took of the receptacle’s untouched contents during that first visit to the house the morning Martin was admitted to the hospital shows the form on top of the pile of trash.
Earlier testimony from employees of the group home and from Susan Steinhauser, the qualified professional who oversaw the clinical business of the home, referred to a meeting of group home employees at the Fayetteville office of Preferred Alternatives. During the meeting, Steinhauser directed the employees to “correct” the forms, she testified. Steinhauser only directed the employees to “add more detail, where they would just say that an incident happened,” she said.
McKoy is being tried under a relatively new and unused statute in the North Carolina Criminal Code, according to prosecutor Tony Berk. Only 12 people have been prosecuted under the statute since it went into effect in 1997. The statute is so new that standard jury instructions have not been developed for judges to give when trying a case under the statute.
In this case, Superior Court Judge James Webb asked for input on jury instructions from Berk and David Crockett, the defense attorney representing McKoy.
“And more counties should use it,” he said. “In this county, we have a lot of these group homes.”
