Marietta Dementia Patient Found in Garage with No Air

A woman who only had a license to rent out rooms to boarders is accused of operating a personal care facility out of her Marietta residence, and housing a 52-year-old patient with dementia in a converted garage with no air on a day when the temperature reached 98 degrees.

Joya Delgado Summers had a city of Marietta business license to operate a boarding home out of her private residence in the 300 block of Whitlock Willow Way.

But she went above and beyond what her license permitted her to do, the spokesman for the Marietta Police Department said this afternoon.

"She was operating it as a personal care home, which requires a completely different license because that involves the potential feeding or bathing of the people that live there, buying prescriptions, administering prescriptions, all that kind of stuff," Officer David Baldwin said. "It's a completely different licensing process."

Police learned of the unlicensed facility from two healthcare providers who were "making the rounds and checking in on this one (woman with dementia)" on July 5, Baldwin said.

On that day, "they found that she was living in a makeshift room inside the garage that didn't have any air conditioning." That's when the Marietta Police Department's investigation started. Summers, however, was not arrested until Tuesday morning.

"It's taken awhile to actually get everything in order as far as figuring out what she was doing," Baldwin said. "It's a very long and extensive investigation. You have to go through records and interviewing people. Unfortunately, some of these things do take time to be able to come to a conclusion on."

Baldwin said others lived at the unlicensed facility, but he did not know the exact number. Nobody else was harmed, he said.

"The investigation is still ongoing," Baldwin said. "There's a potential that there might be other charges. As of right now, that's what they were able to prove."

Summers was booked into the Cobb County Adult Detention Center on charges of abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a disabled person and operating an unlicensed personal care home. She is also accused of filling and purchasing prescription medicine for residents of the personal care home without a license.

She was released Wednesday on a $5,000 bond.