Video of the incident shows a 95-year-old Harlem woman being severely beaten by a visiting caregiver, pleading and using a back scratcher to defend herself, and her family is demanding an explanation.
Dorothy Foy was in her northern Manhattan home on July 21 when a woman her family had hired to care for her began yelling abuse at her and throwing household items at her. According to footage from Nest and Ring cameras reviewed by The Washington Post.
Ms Foy, who uses a walker and requires oxygen, struggled to defend herself as her caregiver struck her multiple times, including at least once with a metal kitchen pan, video of the incident showed.
She ended up collapsing on the floor.
Foy, herself a former home care worker, called her daughter and granddaughters during the beating to tell them “I love you,” but the call then ended, family members said.
Screams were heard as terrified relatives again reached her.
“I [aide] “She said everything was fine,” one of Foye’s granddaughters, Tiffany Mitchell, 43, told The Washington Post.
“Do not yell at her under any circumstances,” Mitchell recalled telling the woman.
“She said, ‘Of course, no. Not at all,’ in a sweet, gentle way,” Mitchell said.
She then called her grandmother again and was surprised by what she heard.
“A woman can be heard in the background shouting foul language at her like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” Mitchell alleged.
According to security camera footage viewed by the family, the caregiver threw water bottles and cans at the elderly woman and then disappeared.
“I saw her begging,” Mitchell said of her impoverished grandmother.
Mitchell’s sister, Michelle, said Foy was forced to defend himself with a scratching stick on his back.
According to the family, the caregiver committed suicide following an argument over changing the sheets, and they found alcohol bottles scattered around the apartment.
The family alleges that workers also damaged their home and left taps running, causing flooding.
Nearly a week has passed since the brutal assault, but Foy is still in pain and suffering all over his body.
“It was awful,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m still in pain. I have bruises on my arms, legs, all over the place. My back hurts, my head hurts.”
Foy said she tried to fight back but was too weak and couldn’t defeat the “big woman” on her own.
Tiffany Mitchell said the aides’ assault left her grandmother a “helpless baby.”
Foy’s family has since hired a new caregiver from another agency, but are demanding action from MedFlight at Home, the Brooklyn-based home health service that sent the suspect.
Employees say the company has given them a succession of inexperienced and careless aides, some of whom allegedly left in the middle of the night without telling anyone, and they are now considering legal action.
“My grandmother is traumatized,” Michelle Mitchell said. “When the home health aide came yesterday she started screaming. She’s still in shock.”
Terrence Weeks, 34, was Foy’s neighbor and had babysat her when she was a child.
“She was a really good person, always helping people,” he told The Washington Post. “Everybody’s in shock… The whole neighborhood knows.”
MedFlight has launched an internal investigation, as well as police, CBS reported.
Foy had worked for a private home care service for many years, her family told The Washington Post. “And now she needed a caregiver and this is what happened,” Michelle Mitchell said.
The NYPD investigation is ongoing, a spokesman told The Washington Post on Saturday. MedFlight did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
