{"id":204571,"date":"2025-10-11T06:43:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T06:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/204571\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T06:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T06:43:15","slug":"alberta-couple-found-guilty-in-death-of-senior-who-spent-days-caked-in-feces-urine-edmonton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/204571\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta couple found guilty in death of senior who spent days caked in feces, urine – Edmonton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\tBy Aaron Sousa<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Canadian Press\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tPosted October 10, 2025 5:23 pm\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t1 min read\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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An Alberta couple has been found guilty in the death of a senior who spent days lying on a floor in her feces and urine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

June Briggs and Richard McElroy were convicted of failing to provide the necessaries of life and criminal negligence in the 2023 death of Briggs\u2019s mother, Dianne Simmons.<\/p>\n

Court heard the 76-year-old had been living with the couple in a home north of Edmonton when she fell and remained on the floor for over a week.<\/p>\n

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She became unresponsive, and paramedics, who reported her as being caked in her own waste, took her to hospital, where she died of multi-organ failure.<\/p>\n

The defence argued the accused were not legally responsible for the woman\u2019s death because she refused help, while the Crown said they owed her help due to their close familial relationship.<\/p>\n

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Court of King\u2019s Bench Justice Kelsey Becker Brookes ruled leaving the woman in the dire state was unacceptable and any reasonable person would have recognized this.<\/p>\n

\u201cA reasonable person placed in these circumstances would recognize that leaving Ms. Simmons on the floor without medical support and basic care is unacceptable,\u201d the judge said in a written decision released this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ordinarily prudent person would anticipate the risk to Ms. Simmons\u2019 life by neglecting to provide care \u2026 and either provide it themselves or seek appropriate assistance if unable to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aaron Sousa The Canadian Press Posted October 10, 2025 5:23 pm 1 min read Descrease article font…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,2169,100309,31030,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-204571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-edmonton-law-courts","12":"tag-elder-abuse","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}