A Florida Department of Children and Families investigator following up on an anonymous tip at a home in Coral Gables called 911 after hearing a woman “crying out for help,” according to an arrest report. Police said an officer would arrive, hear the same plea and go in with her permission ― only to find her living in squalor and showing numerous signs of neglect.
That discovery would lead to the arrest of her “primary caretaker,” 65-year-old Llewellyn Tracy Price.
Officials redacted information from the report about where the incident took place and Price’s relation to the woman, but multiple public records websites list Price as residing at a home on Frow Avenue, just west of the border between Coral Gables and Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood. They also list him as living with a woman in her late 80s bearing the same last name.
According to the Coral Gables Police Department, authorities responded to the location at around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.
The arrest report states that officers saw the woman “confined to the living room couch and unable to stand on her own” and appearing “dehydrated” with a bedroom “in disarray.”
“She was also soiled along with her bed,” police wrote.
Police said they spoke with a relative next door who told them that the woman “has been neglected for quite some time” and said that Price “does not provide her with the necessary medication, nor does he properly feed or give her water.”
The arrest report states that the relative told officers that the victim “needs to be on oxygen treatment,” but Price “also allows her to smoke cigarettes.”
Coral Gables Fire Department medics took the woman to the nearby Baptist Health Doctors Hospital, where staff told police that the woman was “severely dehydrated and appeared malnourished,” police said.
“She also had multiple bruises and lesions on her back,” report states. “(Staff) also advised that she had (redacted) in her vagina that appeared to be there for some time.”
Police said Price went to the home while officers were investigating; they placed him under arrest and said he refused to give a statement.
He did, however, urinate on the CGPD interview room floor prior to being taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, “rendering it inoperable” and requiring “a hazmat response team to decontaminate it, which resulted in a cost for service above $1000,” the report states.
Jail records show that Price was being held at TGK on a $7,500 bond as of Friday, facing charges of aggravated abuse of an elderly or disabled adult and felony criminal mischief.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the incident date.
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