CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – A $17.5 million lawsuit has been filed against a Chesapeake nursing home after staff allegedly tied an elderly woman to her wheelchair and drugged her.
The lawsuit alleges two Carrington Place of Chesapeake nurses used bedsheets to tie Annie Johnson to her wheelchair and confine her in her room overnight in May 2016.
According to the complaint filed in Chesapeake Circuit Court, the nurses also injected Annie Johnson with Geoden — an antipsychotic drug — to “knock her out.”
When another staff member questioned the nurses about Johnson’s confinement, a supervisor told them she is “not a [expletive] babysitter,” the complaint states.
Although staff at Carrington Place are not allowed to use restraint without a doctor’s consent, that same night another resident named Alice Mackey was also tied to her wheelchair and confined to her room, according to the complaint.
Annie Johnson was a Carrington Place resident who suffered from dementia. She depended on Carrington Place staff to bathe, feed and clothe her.
The May 2016 incident left bruising across her body, which her grandson discovered about three days later when he came to visit her at Carrington Place.
Staff members who reported Annie Johnson’s confinement to supervisors were fired during the facility’s “clandestine and superficial review” of the incident. The accused nurses kept their jobs, the complaint states.
A legal representative for Carrington Place could not be reached before publication.
