The temperature sat around 15 degrees when a 97-year-old resident of the Balfour at Lavendar Farms senior living facility in Louisville walked out of the building last year in the middle of the night wearing a nightgown, robe, boots and gloves.
When the door locked shut behind Mary Jo Staub, she used her walker to navigate the sidewalk until she ran into a 5-foot snowbank. There, she ditched the walker, climbed over the snow and crawled 75 feet on her hands and knees to a pair of French doors adjacent to a nurses’ station.
But no one in the building ever saw Staub outside. They never heard her screams or her banging on the windows, according to an investigation conducted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a newly filed lawsuit.
Staub froze to death on the sidewalk in the predawn hours of Feb. 26.
Her family filed a lawsuit this week in Boulder County District Court accusing Balfour, the company’s chief executive officer and two employees on duty that night of negligence, fraud, felonious killing and causing emotional distress to relatives.
Read the full story from our partners at The Denver Post.
