Bertha Jones lost 54 pounds in less than two months, despite the Michigan group home’s staff saying she had been eating three meals a day, the lawsuit says.
Then, on April 14, Jones received a call that her aunt was unresponsive in the hospital and that her organs were shutting down. She weighed 72 pounds, having dropped 54 pounds in less than two months, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Wayne County.She had been “starved to death” while under the care of Hoeft Home and its employees, Charlene Jones alleges in the suit on behalf of her family.
“This lack of regard for human life that occurred inside the four walls of the Hoeft Road home was the cause of her rapid decline in health, her malnutrition, and other injuries suffered by Miss Jones that consequently led to her untimely and cruel and unusual death,” the complaint stated. Jones would sit in the home’s community room, placing her hands in the palms of her aunt’s, letting her feel the skin on her fingers. Sometimes, Aunt Bertha would push her niece’s hands away, which Charlene Jones took to mean that she did not want to be bothered. Other times, she would keep gripping them, rocking back and forth in her recliner chair.Around February, Jones said, she began seeing changes.
By late March, she weighed 103, it states. And on April 14, when she was taken to the hospital after being found unresponsive early in the morning, she weighed 72 pounds, according to the lawsuit.At Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., Bertha Jones was diagnosed with circulatory failure, severe dehydration and protein calorie malnutrition, among other conditions, according to the lawsuit.
Jones visited her aunt at the end-of-life hospice facility every day up until the morning she died. She sat beside her aunt’s bed and stroked her face. She played gospel music. And Jones would whisper softly: “You can go. I’m releasing you, B.J. I’m going to be okay.”
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