Background: The Des Moines County Correctional Center in Burlington, Iowa (Google Maps). Inset: Audrey Engler (Des Moines County Jail).
A woman in southern Iowa is accused of leaving a woman under her care to lie in her bodily fluids, not giving her the medications she needed, and generally failing to look after her.
Audrey Engler, 25, has been charged with intentional dependent adult abuse, according to court records reviewed by Law&Crime. While she was charged just days ago, the alleged offense occurred in August.
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It was the morning of Aug. 15, and the Burlington Police Department learned that a woman had died the night before, per a criminal complaint obtained by The Hawk Eye. She was an older woman paying the in-home care company Vibrance Homecare to look after her, and Engler had been assigned the job.
The 25-year-old suspect was reportedly living with the victim — whose name and age were not immediately available — until July 21, when the older woman was hospitalized after her mattress caught fire. The woman could not move from her bed on her own.
As police began to investigate the victim's status, they apparently discovered harrowing circumstances. She had burns on her back, "large bed sores," soiled linens, a catheter full of urine, and she was sitting in feces, according to the complaint. But that was reportedly not all.
Engler was allegedly not giving the woman the medicine she needed. Furthermore, the home was a mess, with "stuff all over the ground" so that "a person couldn't find a place to sit or stand."
When police spoke with the victim's case manager, the manager said the victim asked the company to buy her clothing items because "all her money was going to Engler," The Hawk Eye reported. The victim also had a nurse, who told investigators she was visiting frequently to deal with the woman's pain, but that Engler encouraged her to reduce the number of times she visited.
Also troubling was that the woman appeared to be getting "skinnier and skinnier," according to the complaint. The woman would communicate with Engler via text when she needed something, but detectives reviewed their message history and found multiple occurrences where Engler "wouldn't respond for hours."
The suspect would reportedly later admit that she only moved the woman "one time a day" and that she "could have taken care of the dependent adult better and could have checked on her more and could have had more compassion for her."
Engler was placed in the Des Moines County Correctional Center on Thursday and is expected in court for a preliminary hearing on Dec. 29.
Burlington is located in southeastern Iowa, along the border with Illinois.
