HIALEAH, Fla. – Authorities say two women were supposed to care for an 87-year-old Hialeah woman, but instead abused, neglected and exploited her — pushing and shoving her, feeding her a meager diet of fast food burgers and forcing her to sleep in a recliner in a cluttered bedroom.
Police said one of the women even moved into the victim’s longtime home, which she stood to inherit, after moving the senior out of it.
Anntoinette Deloris Woods, 49, of Hialeah, and her daughter, Sharanda Patrice Coach, 32, of northwest Miami-Dade, are each facing multiple felony charges following their arrests on Thursday.
According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the victim had moved to Hialeah from Tennessee in 1959 and longtime neighbors recently became concerned after not seeing her for a period of time and noticing ”strange activities” around the house.
They called Hialeah police, who conducted a welfare check on April 30, according to an arrest warrant.
Instead of finding the victim, police said they found Woods, who claimed to be her caregiver. The warrant states that she told police that she had moved the octogenarian to her apartment in Miami and was living with her. Authorities said she obtained power of attorney over the victim.
Woods had met the victim about a decade prior while working at a doctor’s office in Miami Shores, the warrant states, and told police that the victim had asked her to help care for her disabled adult son, who died in 2022. Police said after that, Woods became the victim’s caregiver.
When police went to the Overtown apartment, they said they encountered Coach, who let them into the apartment. SAO officials said police found the victim sitting in a recliner in a “small, cluttered bedroom” lacking a bed and surrounded by houseflies.
It “contained a disassembled bed frame and no mattress, a TV on a dresser, large black garbage bags filled with unknown items strewn about, and a folded walker and wheelchair,” officials said in a news release.
That wheelchair was out of the senior’s reach, police said.
The woman was later found to have several bruises and injuries, including arm fractures, which Coach and Woods claimed stemmed from falls, the warrant states. Police said the woman also had a skin infection on both legs.
Police said doctors determined that the woman’s injuries couldn’t solely be explained by falls.
Medical personnel at Jackson Memorial Hospital determined the woman was malnourished and her pacemaker needed new batteries, the warrant states. Police said Coach and Woods wouldn’t let the woman see a doctor.
Police would later speak to the victim, who, when asked what Coach did to care for her, told them, “You don’t really want to know” and gestured towards her head and throat.
The warrant states that Coach would push, shove and choke the woman. Coach would also verbally abuse the woman, police said, calling the victim, “The nastiest person she ever had.”
Police said Woods and Coach often only fed the woman once or twice a day. The woman told police that her typical meal was a Wendy’s hamburger or some other fast food.
They also didn’t permit her to make phone calls, the warrant states. Coach and Woods allowed the woman to urinate on herself in the recliner rather than help her use the bathroom or let her use equipment that would allow her to get to the bathroom on her own, police said.
The woman told police that she was “called a liar whenever she expressed being in pain,” SAO officials said.
Officials said that the investigation revealed that Woods stood to inherit 95% of the victim’s Hialeah home through a trust established in 2015 and said that Woods deprived the woman of her property by moving her out and moving herself and her family in.
Woods and Coach are each facing charges of exploitation of an elderly person or disabled adult, organized scheme to defraud, neglect of an elderly person or disabled adult and abuse of an elderly person.
Woods and Coach are being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on $72,500 and $62,500 bonds, respectively, as of Friday afternoon, according to online jail records.