Four former employees of an upscale Calabasas assisted-living facility were arrested Thursday on suspicion of elder abuse stemming from the suspicious death of an 80-year-old resident last year, authorities said.
The four are suspected of abusing Elmore Kittower, a retired engineer whose body was exhumed in November after an anonymous whistle-blower from Silverado Senior Living told Kittower's family and authorities that he was the victim of foul play.
After an 11-month investigation, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide detectives said they have evidence that 20-year-old Cesar Ulloa physically assaulted Kittower in the minutes before his death and had been tormenting him for months beforehand. Ulloa, who faces potential charges of elder abuse and torture, is being held on $1- million bail.
Detectives described Ulloa as the alleged ringleader of a group of former Silverado employees who routinely harassed and abused Kittower and several other residents of the hillside facility, which specializes in caring for Alzheimer's and other memory-impaired patients.
The L.A. County coroner's office ultimately determined that Kittower died of a blood clot in his lung, but indicated he had suffered blunt force trauma though it was not an immediate cause of death, according to a source familiar with the findings.
"This is something that saddens us very much. We are outraged at the possibility that these allegations are possibly true," said Mark Mostow, a spokesman for Silverado. "The company has zero tolerance for any mistreatment of our residents."
Kittower's 84-year-old widow, Rita, said she was grateful to detectives for pursuing the case but was devastated by their findings.
"When I heard what they did to him it just about killed me," she said of her husband of 49 years. "I can't get it out of my mind. It's a sore that won't heal."
Rita Kittower said she was initially told by a staff member at Silverado that her husband had died in his sleep. She recalled thinking at the time that at least he would be free of the torment he'd been feeling since losing much of his memory and independence to a severe stroke a year earlier.
But the day after her husband was buried she received a phone call from a woman who identified herself only as "Maria." Kittower said the woman told her that a fellow Silverado employee had punched her husband in the eye and wrapped a towel around his head as if he were trying to suffocate him shortly before he died.
