Former Carroll County Caregiver Sentenced for Abuse of
Vulnerable Adults

BALTIMORE, MD ( December 15, 2009) - Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced today that Colin Lee Gambill, 25, of Frederick was sentenced in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County for abusing two developmentally disabled men who were in his care. Judge Ronald B. Rubin sentenced Gambill to 18 months incarceration and three years supervised probation.

Gambill, a caregiver at a group home administered by the ARC of Carroll County, pleaded guilty on October 6, 2009 to two counts of abuse of a vulnerable adult for engaging in a series of physical abuses on two male residents at the home for the developmentally disabled in Westminster. On June 22, 2008, another caregiver at the group home used her cell phone to videotape Gambill repeatedly hitting one of the residents. When the ARC of Carroll County interviewed other caregivers regarding Gambill’s actions, they admitted witnessing numerous assaults that Gambill had perpetrated on the two residents beginning in November 2007 and continuing through June 2008. Gambill withheld food, gave the residents cold showers, and physically abused them for failing to comply with his wishes. He purposefully inflicted pain on them in order to generate a need for pain medications, causing the residents to fall asleep and thereby requiring less work for Gambill.

This case was transferred from Carroll County to Montgomery County because one of the victims is related to a court officer in Carroll County. This case was prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Attorney General’s Office who has authority to investigate and prosecute abuse and neglect of vulnerable adults in facilities that receive Medicaid funds and in assisted living facilities throughout the State of Maryland. In making today’s announcement, Attorney General Gansler thanked Assistant Attorney General Catherine Schuster Pascale and Investigator Dean Brewer for their work on the case.