Grand Jury Indicts Unlicensed Care-Home Group

A Gwinnett County grand jury has handed down a 21-page indictment against nine people accused of running a ring of unlicensed personal-care homes.

The homes were exposed in a December 2 raid by Gwinnett County Police and other law-enforcement agencies. Authorities say they discovered 12 homes in the Snellville area where people with a range of physical and mental illnesses were being housed.

The residents often were receiving poor care, according to police, and in many cases were being forced to sign over their Social Security and other government benefits directly to the people running the homes.

In all, nine people face 53 exploitation charges in the case.

An attorney for the defendants told the Gwinnett Daily Post that the case is a “witch hunt.”

“I’ve already been receiving calls from people who have multiple family members in one of these facilities or have had them in the past, saying ‘What can we do to help them out because they were great with my family?’ ” lawyer Jack Harrell said to the paper, after filing bond requests at the Gwinnett County Courthouse.

Harrell said the homes were primarily run by Donovan Ricardo Coward and his mother, Dawn Cicelia Walker. He said they never intended to meet the strict standards of a personal-care facility, but instead were trying to run boarding houses for people who couldn’t afford more upscale options.

The December 2 operation stemmed from a May domestic-dispute call at one home, at 4126 Wrexham Dr. in Snellville. There had been an “extensive call history” at the home for medical and domestic issues and code violations and authorities began suspecting it was being run as an unlicensed care facility.

Two suspects at that home were charged with neglect of an elderly person and the investigation that followed revealed other homes and suspects.

Numerous people suffering from a range of mental and physical illnesses were being housed in the homes, according to the indictment. Police said the victims “are living in unsafe and unsupervised conditions and some have a diminished mental capacity.”

In addition to Coward and Walker, the people charged in the case are William J. Walker, Neonard Precious Kumassah, Sasha Chantel Alphonso, Stefani Amoi Walker, Yulanda Natasha Walsh and Reggie Benard McKenzie and Jacqueline Pamela Mitchell, who has not been arrested.