A Baton Rouge man stabbed his live-in girlfriend to death and a South Carolina caregiver allegedly walked away with a dying man's house for five dollars — two cases where the people most at risk got zero protection from a system that spends a fortune claiming to keep them safe.
Garry Miles, 66, was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Friday on second-degree murder and illegal use of weapons counts, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. Police say officers found 54-year-old Faun Reese dead from a stab wound and Miles incapacitated beside her during a welfare check Tuesday. A family member had called police after going days without contact. Miles was later hospitalized for a drug overdose. Reese is dead. The system that was supposed to intervene before a knife came out never did.
A thousand miles east, the same institutional indifference plays out with a different victim. Nora Rowland told WEAU that her 75-year-old father Robert's caregiver, nurse Sarah Smalls, had the deed to his Conway, South Carolina home signed over to herself for $5 weeks before he died. Smalls was named his power of attorney in April. Bank records show money transfers from Robert's account to Smalls — including after he died.
Rowland, who lives in Maryland, said she and her father FaceTimed every week. Then the calls stopped. She drove down on Father's Day and found the locks changed, a Ring camera installed, and a stranger answering the door. Smalls told her through the speaker that her father was dead — had been dead for three days. Inside, the walls were repainted and photographs of people Rowland had never seen hung on the walls. When Smalls arrived, she called the police on Rowland. Officers put Rowland and her partner in handcuffs. Smalls showed them the deed. The daughter was treated as a trespasser in her dead father's home.
A neighbor told police on body-camera footage that he had watched Smalls move furniture out and seen Robert's mental state deteriorate.
