Suit: Care home resident died with paper jammed in windpipe
The mother of a woman with cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities is suing the Philadelphia care home where her daughter lived for 40 years
Cheryl Yewdall spent most of her life at a Philadelphia care home for people with developmental disabilities. It was there, on Jan. 26, that the 50-year-old was found face down on the floor, in a pool of urine, suffocating on a large wad of paper that had been stuffed down her throat.
She died five days later.
No one in authority has said how a 6- or 7-inch paper towel or disinfecting wipe wound up in the trachea of a woman with cerebral palsy and profound intellectual disabilities. The medical examiner’s office said it could not determine the manner of Yewdall’s death, and a police investigation has yielded no arrests.
But an attorney for Yewdall's mother, in a new wrongful death lawsuit, casts suspicion on an unidentified staff member at Merakey Woodhaven — and suggests that Yewdall herself left a disturbing clue about what how she was treated at the place she called home for four decades.
