Woman changes plea in abuse case

July 8, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

YOUNGSTOWN

A former aide at a Boardman assisted-living facility has withdrawn her guilty plea to patient abuse in an incident last summer in which an 87-year-old patient fell and broke his hip three weeks before his death.

Iindia Weatherly, 20, of Staatz Drive, will have a jury trial Aug. 2 before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on the fourth- degree felony charge, which carries a possible six-to-18-month prison term.

At what was to have been a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Weatherly apologized for being careless but said she never assaulted or intended to hurt the alleged victim, Donald Oliver, in the July 30, 2009, incident at the Sateri Homes residence, 102 Boardman-Canfield Road.

“Either you’re guilty, or you’re not guilty. It’s one or the other,” the judge told Weatherly. “If you’re not guilty, then maybe you should withdraw your plea and try this case.”

Weatherly, who is pregnant, said she had been advised earlier to plead guilty in the hope of a reduced sentence, but she did not identify the source of that advice in court.

After a brief recess, Weatherly’s lawyer, Mark Lavelle, told the judge his client wanted to withdraw her guilty plea and go to trial, and the judge granted her request.

Lavelle earlier had told Judge Krichbaum that Oliver fell after Oliver and Weatherly pulled on opposite sides of a kitchen door, and the door flew open outside the kitchen in Oliver’s direction.

Weatherly was adhering to a company policy that the kitchen door was to remain shut, Lavelle said.

Witnesses told police Weatherly deliberately pushed the door open in Oliver’s direction, knocking him to the floor, and that Weatherly punched Oliver while he was lying on the floor, said J. Michael Thompson, an assistant county prosecutor.

Oliver broke his hip in the fall and died Aug. 20, 2009, with the coroner ruling his death a homicide due to complications from blunt-force injuries.

The prosecution, however, cannot prove the July 30 incident directly caused Oliver’s death and, therefore, it cannot support a homicide-level criminal charge, Thompson added.

In a victim-impact statement on behalf of the family, Oliver’s son, Everett, called for the maximum sentence, saying: “Our father was taken from us years before he was ready to leave.”