(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
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Prosecutors drop murder charge against care facility worker [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- October']
Date: 2023-10-06
A $13-an-hour nursing assistant initially charged with murder in the death of an assisted living resident has pleaded guilty to a greatly reduced charge of dependent adult abuse.
Catherine Forkpa, 32, pled guilty to the charge on Friday, three months after her superiors at Bondurant’s Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing gave sworn testimony — now sealed from public view — indicating they failed to respond to several hours’ worth of phone alerts about door alarms sounding inside the facility.
The alerts were triggered by a resident with dementia, 77-year-old Lynne Stewart, leaving her room and, hours later, wandering outside in sub-zero temperatures. Stewart was found outdoors the next morning and was declared dead a short time later.
Forkpa was initially charged with second-degree murder, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 50 years in prison. The dependent adult abuse charge carries a penalty that ranges from a fine of $855 to two years in prison and an $8,540 fine.
Polk County prosecutors have agreed to recommend a deferred judgment in the case with two years of supervised probation. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 7.
State inspectors’ reports indicate Stewart walked out of her room at Courtyard Estates at about 4:32 p.m., triggering a series of alarms at the facility. At about 9:40 p.m., an alarm on an exit door in the facility was triggered, indicating someone may have left the building. According to police, surveillance video showed that in the hours that followed, Forkpa walked around the facility for hours without checking on Stewart or resetting the alarms.
Shortly after 6 a.m. on Jan. 22, workers found Stewart outside, on the ground, with parts of her body covered in ice. Forkpa, who had worked at Courtyard Estates for seven months as a certified nursing assistant, was fired. Four other employees were given written warnings for their failure to respond to door alarms, according to state records.
Testimony in case sealed by Polk County judge
Forkpa’s criminal trial was rescheduled several times. In July, prosecutors sought another continuance, telling the court that after completing depositions in the case they wanted to conduct “further investigation into issues that arose.”
Written copies of two depositions in the case were made public on Iowa Courts Online shortly after a hearing Friday morning. Later that same day, the clerk’s office posted a judge’s order restricting public access to those documents and the records are now considered sealed.
The newly sealed records indicate one of the individuals who gave deposition testimony was Dwala Marie Lehman, the executive director of Courtyard Estates at the time of Stewart’s death.
In her testimony, Lehman acknowledged the alarm on the door to Stewart’s room was triggered at 4:32 p.m. on Jan. 20, but wasn’t deactivated until 7:15 a.m. the next day — 17 hours later — around the time Stewart’s body was found.
State inspection records indicate that screenshots of Lehman’s phone indicate that by 9:44 p.m. Lehman was receiving phone alerts about a separate alarm on the building’s exit door, and that she continued to receive those alerts every five minutes through the night while she slept.
Lehman testified she couldn’t recall whether she contacted the staff at Courtyard Estates to have them check on Stewart after the alarms were triggered.
“Would you agree that when somebody — a resident, a geriatric patient — walks out of your facility and freezes to death, that that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty significant event, right?” public defender Matthew Sheeley, who represented Forkpa, asked.
“Yes,” Lehman replied.
“And the events of that day — what you did the day before and what you did the day that this unfortunate event occurred — those events are pretty significant and you’d kind of remember what was happening during those days, right?” Sheeley asked.
“I would,” Lehman said.
“I’m just going to ask you,” Sheeley continued, “is it possible you saw these notifications and you ignored them?”
“No,” Lehman replied.
Sheeley pointed out that police and state-inspection reports suggest Stewart’s door was in alarm mode for 17 hours and that during that time Lehman appeared to have made no effort to respond to it or have others look into the situation.
“I’m asking you, having heard that now, whether it’s possible that you failed or neglected to contact the staff about the alarm to Lynne’s door?” Sheeley asked.
“It’s possible,” Lehman said.
In her testimony, Lehman also acknowledged that Forkpa didn’t come on duty until 10:18 p.m. on Jan. 20, and that by then the alarm on Stewart’s door had been sounding for almost six hours.
“So there’s a six-hour window where all of these other staff members that were working the shift prior to her didn’t do anything to correct the alarm,” Sheeley observed. “Is that a fair statement?”
“Yes,” Lehman replied.
Lehman initially testified her responsibility in the matter was limited to ensuring that “the staff had the tools” to do their jobs, which led to more direct questioning from Sheeley.
“It’s apparent that your subordinates were not fulfilling their responsibilities,” Sheeley said. “Because had they done that, the alarm to her door would have been corrected almost immediately, right?”
“Correct,” Lehman said.
“Do you think it’s acceptable for an alarm to be in alarm mode for six hours without anybody checking on it?”
“No,” Lehman replied.
Lehman testified that in the wake of Stewart’s death, state licensing officials hadn’t sanctioned her in any way and had not, to her knowledge, fielded any complaints about her conduct in the matter. She testified that she now works at for Accura Health Care at a Knoxville care facility.
‘There were a lot of people that were ignoring things’
The sealed records also indicate that Courtyard Estates’ former health care coordinator, Jamie Haub, gave sworn, pre-trial testimony in the case. In her deposition, Haub testified that Stewart’s death had been a traumatic experience for her. “It was awful,” she testified.
Haub said she was the on-call nurse at the time of Stewart’s death and she acknowledged telling state inspectors that while she was at home that night she received continuous alerts on her phone about the door alarms and failed to respond because she was with her family and, later, went to bed.
“If the alarm continues to trip and you see this on your phone, and you don’t respond to it — I mean, if nobody on-site is dealing with this, what’s the remedy?” Sheeley asked. “What do you guys do?”
“Usually if we see that alarm is going off, we do monitor the phone,” Haub testified. “We just don’t sit and stare at (the phone) all the time … We do call and let the staff know or check in and see what’s going on.”
“Obvious question is, if you check your phone, if the alarms were tripping at 4:32 and you were getting these alerts every 10 minutes, you would have been receiving these alerts all the way up until 9:30 if you checked your phone, right?”
“Yes,” Haub replied.
“Did you see these alerts?” Sheeley asked.
“I believe I saw the ones for Lynne’s room, yes,” Haub replied. “I did not see the one for the exit door… The exit door would be very concerning. It was negative 9 degrees out.”
“It sure sounds like that there were a lot of people that were ignoring things,” Sheeley said. “Is that fair?”
“Yes,” Haub replied.
“The door alarm was constantly going off. By your own admission, you ignored it, right?”
“That is correct,” Haub said.
“Would you agree that Ms. Lehman ignored things, too?”
“I would agree with that, yes,” Haub replied.
Court records indicate no charges have been filed against Haub or Lehman in connection with Stewart’s death.
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