BALTIMORE GROUP HOME EMPLOYEE PLEADS GUILTY TO NEGLECT OF VULNERABLE ADULTS

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announced today that Thomas C. Williams, a former house manager at a group home for developmentally disabled individuals, pleaded guilty Monday before Judge Christian M. Kahl in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County to neglect of a vulnerable adult. The guilty plea was in connection with an incident on February 18, 2003, when Williams left two developmentally disabled adults alone and unsupervised for almost four hours. February 18, 2003 was the last day of a blizzard which covered Baltimore County with two feet of snow, and the two men were found wandering around the Rolling Winds apartment complex where they live.

At the time of the incident, Williams, 36, of the 1100 block of Bonaparte Avenue in Baltimore, was employed by Creative Options, Inc., which operates the group home at 7102 Burford Court, Apt. 204, Baltimore County, where the two men in question, Gregory A., 46, and Larry J., 22, lived. Because of their developmental disabilities, each of the men required 24-hour supervision, which Williams was paid to deliver.

A concerned neighbor found one of the men struggling to walk in the snow and about an hour later the groundskeeper found the second man in the apartment’s parking lot. Because they were exposed for a relatively short period of time, neither man suffered serious physical injury.

Sentencing is scheduled for March 2, 2004. Neglect of a vulnerable adult is a misdemeanor punishable by a sentence of five years and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

This case was prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which has authority to prosecute abuse and neglect of vulnerable adults in Medicaid-funded facilities.

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