Such bravado in the face of damning evidence. This is my type of lawyer, I love a vigorous defense even when the chips are stacked against you. One thing he’s got going for him is the parents’ statements on his behalf (with at least one suffering from dementia and thus of questionable reliability). But even so, I don’t think you can acquiesce to abuse as a protected class (i.e. minors and the elderly). This is how I imagine the motel, circa 1989.Macomb County, MI Eric Gala loves his parents and would never abuse or neglect them.
That’s what his attorney, Tim Barkovic, said of the Fraser motel owner accused of tying his elderly parents to a bed or chair and keeping them in an unsanitary room attached to the motel’s main office.
“He vehemently denies these allegations. He cares for and loves his parents,” Barkovic said Monday after Gala’s preliminary exam was adjourned until Dec. 20 in 39th District Court. “My client is absolutely not guilty.”
Fraser public safety officials said they responded to the Flamingo Motel on Groesbeck on Nov. 6 on an abuse complaint from a former employee.
They said they found the couple, ages 92 and 78, in a dark room filled with flies, lying in their own feces and urine. The mother, 78, had a strap around her waist that was tied to a chair next to the bed, Lt. Dan Kolke had said. He did not know how the father, 92, was being held, but said he was in the same bed.
The couple also was tied to a chair when watching TV, and an inside door handle was taken off so they couldn’t leave, Kolke had said. He said police believe Gala did not want to put his parents in a nursing home.
Gala, 55, of Lenox Township, is charged with two counts of second-degree vulnerable adult abuse, a four-year felony.
Barkovic said the father, who founded the motel, “will tell the world that he was not mistreated, that he and his wife were more than perfectly cared for by his son, his (son’s) wife and grandson and countless other employees of the Flamingo Motel.”
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“This amounts to senior citizen kidnapping,” Barkovic said.
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Barkovic said Gala’s father wanted to stay at the motel, where he was comfortable. He said Gala’s mother had to be restrained to a bed or a chair because she has severe dementia and would wander away.
Barkovic said the elderly parents were fed three meals a day; the mother had her diaper changed on a regular basis, and their room was cleaned on a daily basis.
He said the city wants the motel closed and that the charges are “false and fabricated.”
Kolke said “that’s absolutely not true.”
“The case speaks for itself,” he said. “Any sane person would see that’s abuse.”
bubblingpoint 