Posted on 01/05/2005 6:35:54 AM PST by Calpernia
The parents of a 13-year-old foster child who made her bring food to a dead man who lay rotting in their Clark home pleaded guilty Tuesday to elderly neglect and child cruelty.
Kenneth Keaveney and his wife, Donna, pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, admitting that Donna's father was left to rot upstairs for weeks before being found on the floor of a room littered with flies, maggots and dog feces.
Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said the plea ends any doubts as to what happened to Nicola Lombardi, whose decomposed corpse was discovered nearly mummified in the August heat inside the upstairs living room of the split level house he owned in a residential section of the township back in 2003.
"The case serves as a grim reminder of the need to provide proper care for our elderly," the prosecutor said. "There is also a price to pay for what they did to this young girl by making her care for him under such horrible conditions."
Clark police responding to calls about a foul odor that had permeated the neighborhood found the 82-year-old man's body in an advanced state of decomposition. An autopsy determined that Lombardi had been dead for several weeks in the room where the girl was sent every day with food, said police Chief Anton Danco.
Superior Court Judge Scott J. Moynihan, in accepting the pleas, said while the couple may not face state prison time, they still could be ordered to pay fines, attend counseling, perform community service, and serve time in the Union County jail as a condition of probation when they are sentenced March 23.
The 13-year-old girl and two other foster children, ages 11 and 4, were removed from the house by the state Division of Youth and Family Services after the body was found.
I'm almost afraid to ask, but how did you manage to find a decomposing body?
Hi. I just realized that the response I made to you earlier didn't appear on the thread.
I asked if you were a child when you found the body. I hope that you weren't.
No, I was in my 30's. I wasn't freaked out. I just hope not to repeat it.
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