A 59-YEAR-OLD woman was found in an emaciated condition weighing just three stone lying unwashed and in filth, a court heard yesterday.
Evelyn Joel was taken by ambulance personnel from her daughter’s home in Enniscorthy to Wexford General Hospital on January 1st, 2006, but she died at the hospital six days later, Wexford Circuit Criminal Court was told yesterday.
Ms Joel’s daughter Eleanor (37) and her partner Jonathan Costen (39) deny two charges relating to the death of Ms Joel, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, who was living with them at their home at Cluain Dara in Enniscorthy.
Both Ms Joel and Mr Costen deny a charge of the unlawful killing of Evelyn Joel on January 7th, 2006, by neglect, causing her to die of pneumonia, complicating sepsis syndrome due to infected pressure sores from immobilisation due to MS.
They also deny a charge of reckless endangerment of Evelyn Joel on a date unknown between December 1st 2005 and January 1st 2006 contrary to section 13 of the Non Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.
The specifics of the charge are that they intentionally or recklessly engaged in conduct, namely failing to ensure that Evelyn Joel received nourishment; to attend to her sanitary requirements; to attend to her lack of mobility; and/or obtain timely medical attention which created a substantial risk of death or serious harm to her.
Yesterday, staff nurse at Wexford General Hospital’s emergency department Mary Kelly told how she met Ms Joel when she was brought to the hospital by ambulance at about 8.40pm on New Year’s Day 2006.
Emergency medical technician Liam O’Neill had phoned ahead to alert them to the seriousness and nature of Ms Joel’s condition and when the ambulance arrived, she went into the ambulance to see Ms Joel.
Ms Kelly said that there was a really bad odour in the back of the ambulance and she could see Ms Joel was “very frail, very emaciated”, had “a vacant, glazed look in her eye” and that her shoulder-length hair was “very matted”.
It was decided in line with the hospital’s infection-control policy to bring Ms Joel to an isolated bathroom to wash her and it was in the course of preparing her for a bath that she noticed the full extent of Ms Joel’s condition, said Ms Kelly.
Her mid-region was covered in a mixture of faeces and urine and she noticed “a pool of white slop” containing larvae or maggots. After she was bathed, the water in the bath appeared like “a dirty river”, said Ms Kelly.
Acting nurse manager Carmel Watchorn helped wash Ms Joel and she told the court that when she washed away the faeces and other dirt, she noticed the skin on Ms Joel’s inner thighs was very dark and had lost vitality and started to come away.
Staff nurse at the emergency department Deirdre Byrne told how she saw sores of breaking skin all over Ms Joel’s body with the most visible ones being around her thighs and groin area while she also had sores on her hip and at her ankles.
Ambulance personnel Liam O’Neill and Ray Sinnott told how they found Ms Joel lying under a duvet on a bed in an upstairs room of the family home in Cluain Dara and they both noted the appalling odour as they went up the stairs
The jury of six men and six women heard from some seven HSE witnesses who all told of speaking to Ms Joel at various stages during her removal and transfer to hospital but all said she never spoke or responded verbally at any stage.
Mr Costen’s mother Phyllis told the court that she had washed Ms Joel’s hair when she visited in August but that Ms Joel had refused to allow her tidy her bed. “She was a bit of a stubborn woman,” she said.
The case continues and is expected to last over three weeks before Judge Gerard Griffin.