FORMER BALTIMORE COUNTY CAREGIVER SENTENCED FOR NEGLECT OF A VULNERABLE ADULT

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announced today that Thomas C. Williams, a former house manager at a group home for developmentally disabled individuals, was sentenced March 2 to 18 months incarceration for neglecting a vulnerable adult in connection with an incident on February 18, 2003, when he left two developmentally disabled adults alone and unsupervised for almost four hours. February 18, 2003 was the last day of a blizzard that covered Baltimore County with two feet of snow. The two men were found separately, wandering around the Rolling Winds apartment complex where they live.

Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Christian M. Kahl suspended all but eight months of the sentence, and placed Williams on one year supervised probation and ordered Williams to refrain from working as a direct care provider for people who are vulnerable adults for the entire period of probation.

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 where the two men, Gregory A., 46, and Larry J., 22, lived. Because of their developmental disabilities, each of the men required twenty-four hour supervision, which Williams was paid to deliver.

A concerned neighbor found one of the men struggling to walk in the snow and 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.

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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