Elder Abuse Charge in Woman’s Death

A Glendale man described by neighbors as a recluse was charged with elder abuse Wednesday for allegedly allowing his dying 93-year-old mother to waste away in filth with open sores.

Hugh McDade, 58, was arrested after his mother, Agnes, was rushed to Glendale Memorial Hospital early Monday suffering from cardiopulmonary arrest. Doctors who saw her condition summoned Glendale police, authorities said.

She was pronounced dead minutes after arriving at the hospital. A report by the coroner’s office on the cause of death was pending.

Agnes McDade had numerous sores, abrasions and skin tears, including one large wound on her back that was grotesquely infected, police said.

“I’d be surprised if she was 65 pounds. The only way to describe her was as a skeleton with a thin layer of skin,” Glendale Police Sgt. Jon Perkins said.

Perkins said McDade seemed to prefer using cardboard, rather than adult diapers or something else, to contain his mother’s waste.

“Rather than try to wash her off or change her, he thought this was the easiest thing to do,” Perkins said. “He dressed her wounds to her lower ankles with paper towels and secured them with rubber bands around her legs and that cut off her circulation.”

Perkins said McDade, a former security guard, was unemployed for about the past 12 years. McDade and his mother, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Lomita Avenue, apparently lived off his mother’s savings and government assistance, he said.

The son’s call to paramedics Monday came shortly before 7 a.m., several hours after McDade said he had noticed his mother was having difficulty breathing, police said.

Authorities said the felony charge against McDade essentially means he did not bother to take proper care of his mother. He is not charged with beating her or directly causing her wounds, authorities said.

“He didn’t cause them but what he did was, he didn’t take care of her,” said Chahe Keuroghelian, a Glendale police spokesman. “He allowed it to happen.”

At a Municipal Court appearance Wednesday, the graying, bespectacled McDade sat quietly as a prosecutor and a public defender briefly addressed Court Commissioner Dona Bracke.

Casey Lilienfeld, a public defender who asked that McDade’s arraignment be delayed, told Bracke that McDade had lived in the Glendale area nearly his entire life and was an Army veteran. McDade has no prior record except for a 1966 charge of driving under the influence, and he apparently had tried for some time to keep his mother alive, Lilienfeld said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Ed Lutes briefly supported the abuse charge.

“The person probably closest to him in his life was allowed to die under these circumstances,” Lutes said.

Bracke set McDade’s arraignment for today. McDade, who remained in custody on $20,000 bond, faces a maximum sentence of four years in state prison if convicted.

At the apartment building where a manager said the McDades lived for more than eight years, several neighbors said they rarely saw either of them.

“It was like I lived next door to nobody,” said Anait Paltadzhyan, who lives next to the McDade apartment. “Their door was always closed and they never said hello or anything.”

Haik Torosian, the building manager, said Hugh McDade was pleasant and always paid the rent on time. Agnes McDade also seemed like a good person, though she did not like people coming into the apartment, even for repairs, he said.

For about the past year, some neighbors complained about a persistent foul odor coming from the McDade apartment, he said.

“I don’t know what it was,” Torosian said. “As for this elder abuse they’re talking about, I didn’t see anything like that.”

Times special correspondent Steve Ryfle contributed to this story.