Photo via Wikimedia Commons
The operator of a Bay Terraces independent living facility pleaded guilty earlier this week to abuse of a dependent adult for leaving at least one disabled resident in squalid conditions that led to his hospitalization, the San Diego City Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
Prosecutors allege that a 41-year-old paraplegic was found in one of Long T. Tran’s facilities “covered in feces and afflicted with tunneling skin ulcers covered by severe bed sores.” The City Attorney’s Office said the man’s catheter was infected with fecal matter and had not been changed in three weeks, while one week later, another patient of Tran’s Jouglard Street facility was hospitalized with seizures.
Though he was banned by state officials from operating group-living facilities for senior citizens and dependent adults because of “multiple violations” at his prior San Diego County care facilities, the City Attorney’s Office says he operated the Bay Terraces facility, as well as others in the county.
The City Attorney’s Office says that per state law, independent living facility residents are supposed to be able to care for themselves without supervision, yet at least nine residents at Jouglard Street needed care and supervision for routine activities.
“Those who reside in independent living facilities are often just one step away from homelessness, and are unwilling to risk the little protection they have by complaining,” City Attorney Mara W. Elliott said. “They deserve to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect — not like yesterday’s garbage.”
Following his guilty pleas Tuesday to elder/dependant adult abuse and a count of violating a court order prohibiting him from operating an unlicensed care facility, he was immediately sentenced to 30 days in jail, though his custody was stayed pending successful completion of one year of probation.
Probation conditions prohibit him from operating an unlicensed community care facility or providing transportation or placement of anyone who needs care or assistance to any facility.
Tran is the seventh local independent living facility operator convicted of either elder/dependent adult abuse or providing unlicensed care since 2020, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
–City News Service