Three Louisville Balfour employees accused of fabricating domestic violence allegations
March 16—Three employees at a Balfour senior living facility are facing charges after making a false domestic violence report that led to the arrest of an elderly man.
Joshua Ryan Merrill, 34, and Kara Shea Roberts, 33, face charges of attempting to influence a public servant, false reporting to authorities, false reporting – abuse of a vulnerable elder and custodial neglect.
Dainju Salinas Mosqueda, 31, faces charges of failure to act as a mandated reporter.
Merrill and Mosqueda have been taken into custody, while warrants for Roberts remain active, court records show. All three have been or will be given personal recognizance bonds
Balfour officials have not yet returned requests for comment.
According to an affidavit, Mosqueda called Louisville police on Jan. 10 and said Merrill and Roberts saw a man hitting his wife, who was a resident of the Balfour facility.
Both Roberts and Merrill confirmed to police that they saw the man beat his wife on separate occasions.
The woman, who suffers from memory problems, could not remember her husband’s name or whether someone was beating her when police spoke to her, but police took the man into custody based on eyewitness accounts.
But when police returned to the facility on Jan. 24 to take surveillance footage, Mosqueda said he reviewed the footage and learned that the assault that Merrill and Roberts reported had not actually occurred.
Mosqueda said he discovered the discrepancy the day after the report was made more than two weeks ago, but did not inform police at the behest of his “VP of operations.” Masjeda said he was also told not to allow police to review security footage and to tell police nothing happened.
According to the affidavit, Mosqueda gave officers a USB drive that contained video surveillance footage instead of surveillance video.
Noting the standard was not high enough to see, a sergeant requested to view the footage on site. When the sergeant reviewed the footage, it confirmed that the man never hit his wife at the time and place Merrill and Roberts allege.
“At this point I understand that none of the statements made against (the husband) are true,” the sergeant wrote in the report.
According to the affidavit, Roberts was a third-party contractor and was not retained, while Merrill and Mosqueda were still employees when their warrants were issued.
Balfour is currently facing a lawsuit after a woman died at one of its Louisville facilities.
#Louisville #Balfour #employees #accused #fabricating #domestic #violence #allegations
