A Gwinnett County man is facing charges “after maintenance workers discovered his elderly mother living in deplorable conditions.” A report of “a person down” led Duluth police officers to respond to a residence and then to immediately call “for paramedics after discovering 88-year-old Ruby Sherman alone and near death inside a residence on the 3500 block of South Street.”
As reported, maintenance workers called police to the residence after they found the elderly woman in a back bedroom, unresponsive. In the police report, “responding officers noted Sherman was filthy, lying in bed on a urine-stained mattress covered with a blanket.” Further evidence of her grotesque mistreatment was that Sherman “was emaciated and covered in open sores. There was old food scattered around the floor.” A reaction of an officer on the scene was quoted as “becoming physically ill” from the horrid smell in the house.
Ruby Sherman’s son, 56-year-old Tony Sherman, “has been charged with abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a disabled or elderly person.” Tony Sherman was arrested Monday, “two weeks after police questioned him on scene as his mother was being rushed to the hospital.” Tony Sherman’s story to the police changed over the weeks. Sherman “originally told police he lives in Lawrenceville, but later admitted he stays with his mother.”
As reported, Tony Sherman claimed that “he checked on his mother several times a day, and said she doesn’t want to live in a nursing home.” His is quoted as saying his mother “hadn’t been to the doctor in a few years, and he had a hard time getting her to eat.”
