Photo: Sandra Coons. Photo: Courtesy Ozark County Sheriff’s Office via Ozark County Times
An Ozark County woman is set to make a court appearance Tuesday to answer to allegedly abandoning her husband on a mattress in an empty house without access to “water, food, restroom facilities, medicine, and other needed supplies knowing (he) was unable to care for himself.” She did, however, reportedly leave him 10 cases of Budweiser beer.
Court records indicate the husband suffered “serious physical injury as a result.”
The Ozark County Times reports 63-year-old Sandra Coons of Isabella is scheduled to appear before Associate Judge Raymond Gross in Ozark County Court.
Coons is charged with the Class B felony of assault in the second degree of a special victim and the Class A misdemeanor of abuse of an elderly, disabled, or vulnerable person.
The Class B felony of assault, the second-highest level felony allowed in the state, carries a sentence of five to 15 years if convicted.
According to the probable cause statement, an officer was dispatched to a home along County Road 619 in reference to an abandonment issue in mid-November last year.
The officer reported speaking with a woman who reportedly told him Coons had picked up her husband from a nursing home, took him home, then moved out and left him on the floor with a mattress and 10 cases of beer.
The officer reported walking into the house to take photographs and observing full cases of beer stacked in the hallway.
According to an obituary published in the Jan. 26 edition of the Ozark County Times, Coons’ husband died Jan. 5. It’s unclear if the neglect from last November was a contributing factor.
On the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page post about her arrest, Sandra Coons commented, “…I never hurt Bob, but I spent a lot of money on help that never showed up. Yes, there was 10 cases of beer in my house, but I don’t drink. I made sure Bob had his beer. He loved him some Budweiser.”
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