Nurse’s aide sentenced for neglectful death

No human being should be treated the way Charles Furry was treated, Prince William Circuit Court Judge Richard Potter said Thursday.

In August 2003, paramedics found Furry, a 55-year-old man with Lou Gehrig's disease, sitting covered in bed sores and crawling with maggots, immobile in a recliner at his Triangle apartment.

His clothes were soaked with his urine and drool, and it appeared he had not been bathed in days, witnesses said.

His nurse's aide, Joann Williams, was convicted earlier this year of abuse and neglect of an incapacitated adult.

Thursday, Potter sentenced Williams, 47, to serve one year of a four-year prison sentence, with the other three years suspended. He also ordered her to serve three years probation.

"What happened to Mr. Furry was not, I repeat, not inevitable," Potter said. "He was a human being and as such he is entitled to basic dignity and respect."

Furry never would have been in such conditions if Williams had "simply done her job," Potter said.

According to testimony at her January trial, Williams was employed as a home health care aide with Woodbridge-based Sierra Home Health Care during two months in the summer of 2003. Her job was to care for Furry for five to eight hours a day during weekdays, bathing and feeding him, and performing light housekeeping.

A registered nurse, Isatu Wurie, was assigned to supervise Furry's care and visit his apartment once every 30 days to check on him.

When Wurie arrived on Aug. 21, 2003, she found Furry covered in his own urine and drool and crawling with maggots. She called paramedics, who transported him to Potomac Hospital where it took more than 30 minutes to decontaminate him before he could be treated.

Furry died of Lou Gehrig's disease about two weeks later, on Sept. 5, 2003.

"Because he died about 15 days later, some of the last days of Mr. Furry's life were spent in these deplorable conditions,"  Assistant Attorney General Steven W. Grist said at Williams' sentencing hearing.

"The only thing standing between him and these conditions was the defendant, and she took no steps to help him," Grist said. "If this were a case of animal cruelty it would be serious enough, but Mr. Furry was a human being."

Williams and her defense attorney, John Carroll, said she tried to bring Furry's condition to the attention of Sierra Home Health Care, but she received no help from them.

Williams was not responsible for providing medical care for Furry, Carroll said.

"[Williams] was never deemed to be a medical provider," Carroll said. "She did what she was capable of doing ... she helped him as best she could."

Wurie, the registered nurse, was also charged with abuse and neglect, but a jury found her not guilty of the charge in July.

Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 73-878-8014.