Ohio Family Claims They Plan to Sue Nursing Home After Matriarch’s Death Was Deemed Homicide
The family of an Ohio lady who died from sepsis after developing a pressure wound at a nursing facility is demanding justice for their mother.
Lucy Garcia was 72 years old when she died on July 2. She was previously a resident at Arbors at Oregon, a nursing home located 4½ miles southeast of Toledo.
Arbors in Oregon did not immediately reply to demands for comment Friday, but Matt Mooney, an attorney for the Garcia family, stated that the family intends to launch a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility.
“In Ohio, wrongful death … is any death that’s caused by neglect, negligence, recklessness, willful conduct like an intentional homicide, that would all fall within a wrongful death case,” Mooney told the nation’s largest newspaper.
The family has maintained that the nursing home’s system established policies and procedures for their personnel to follow, which resulted in Garcia’s death, according to Mooney.
Mooney stated that the family wants “accountability from the Arbors of Oregon.”
“The family feels this is not an isolated incident at the Arbors,” he told me. “The facility is run by management and administration, as well as the Arbors’ corporate parent, who is directing the staff to do the impossible: work harder, longer hours, take more patients, and do more with less.” We believe that was a prescription for disaster. Mooney and his colleagues requested data from the care home on September 16 and are awaiting delivery. Only then can a civil lawsuit be filed.
Mooney stated that the family’s argument is mostly based on the autopsy report conducted following Garcia’s death.
The report, acquired by USA TODAY, states that her death was caused by “caretaker neglect resulting in complications of a sacral pressure wound.” The coroner judged her death a homicide.
Mooney stated that this is a first for him.
“I’ve been practicing law in Ohio for nine years, primarily in medical malpractice cases and nursing home neglect cases, and I’ve never seen a coroner that unequivocal about the cause of a person’s death being medical neglect under any circumstances,” Mooney told me.
The woman was not being rotated or moved at the care facility, according to her family.
Mooney stated that Garcia once lived freely before suffering a stroke that left her with weakness on the left side of her body.
She stayed with her son for a while, but the 24-hour care she required proved too much for the family to bear, thus she was transferred to Arbors of Oregon in October 2019. According to Mooney, the Arbors of Oregon told the family that they could provide Garcia with the necessary care.
“For the most part, he did not have any major concerns with her care but began to notice beginning in early 2024 that when they came to visit their mom, the facility was no longer getting her up and out of bed,” Mooney said, adding that she was in bed most of the time and was not put in her chair or up and moving, which prevents bed sores.
Her relatives also did not see anyone come to her room to assist her, Mooney recounted.
She quickly complained of back pain and was transported to St. Charles Hospital on June 19, where physicians discovered a Stage 4 pressure ulcer on her rear.
The nursing home had not informed her family about the wound and “kept it covered up with bandages,” Mooney said, adding that Garcia died of sepsis on July 2.
Her wound had become infected and migrated to her circulation, he explained.
Mooney stated that there was a similar case before Garcia at the facility in which a care provider was charged with homicide, involuntary manslaughter, and two charges of neglect and abuse.
“A care provider was charged and convicted of those charges of involuntary manslaughter and patient abuse related to that treatment,” according to him.
According to a lawyer, the Ohio woman was a great-grandmother who served as the foundation of her family.
Mooney stated that Garcia came from a huge family. She had four sons by herself and was a “motherly figure to all the kids in the neighborhood.”
Everyone knew they could come to the Garcia home with open arms, he explained.
“If their friends needed a place to stay for the night or needed a meal, Lucy was glad to get that and she was very adamant about her sons being raised right and being self-sufficient,” Mooney recalls.
“Her family viewed her as the center of their family unit, and she was included in just about every single one of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s births,” Mooney told me.
She leaves behind nine great-grandchildren, seventeen grandkids, and four sons.
Lawyer says woman’s death a tragedy
“I think it’s important to understand that certainly what happened to Lucy is a tragedy,” Mooney told the BBC. “We’ve already spoken with others who had loved ones at the Arbors of Oregon, and their experiences were extremely similar. We’re going to investigate why this is the case, as well as what Arbors’ systems, rules, and procedures were that resulted in such outcomes for Lucy and other residents.
He stated that Garcia’s family does not want this to happen to anybody else, and they hope that the attention her case is receiving will keep it from occurring to another family.
“No one deserves to be treated the way that Lucy was treated,” Mr. Mooney added. “No one deserves to have a stage 4 pressure ulcer. That is total tissue loss down to her bone. They never want to see that happen again.”