Saturday, September 8, 2007

Confining Miss Daisy

Worried neighbors in Atlantic Beach, Florida asked police to check out a home in their neighborhood. When they got there the front door was padlocked from the outside, the backdoor nailed shut, and a 92-year-old woman was locked inside.

"There's no air conditioning in the house at all, they said it was over 95 degrees. None of the windows were open, a couple fans were on inside the residence," says Atlantic Beach Detective Tiffany Layson. Police used bolt cutters to get in and took the woman to the hospital.

The woman's 40-year-old grandson, Wilfred Hutchinson, was arrested when he walked up to the house while police were still there. He told detectives he'd been locking up his grandmother for three or four years.

It's one of the worst cases of elderly abuse Atlantic Beach Police have seen. "It's awful, breaks our hearts, she also had a foot injury so she could barely walk, then to lock the residence knowing it's possible she would need medical care, it's a sad situation," says Layson. Hutchinson is still in jail, his bail is set at $100,000.

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