Wife charged after reportedly abandoning incapacitated husband, leaving him only beer to consume
Sandra Coons, 63, of Isabella, is scheduled to appear before Associate Judge Raymond Gross at 9 am. Feb. 15, in Ozark County Court for a criminal setting in a case where she’s alleged to have abandoned her husband on a mattress in an empty home 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.
The report says the husband suffered “serious physical injury as a result.”
She’s 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 prepared by former Ozark County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kyle Hannaford, the officer was dispatched to a home on County Road 619 in reference to an abandonment issue Nov.16, 2021.
Hannaford spoke with a woman who’d visited the home and found incapacitated 74-year-old Robert “Bob” Coons lying on a urine-soaked mattress with no food and water other than beer.
The woman reportedly told the officer that, “the wife, Sandra Coons…picked him up from the nursing home, took him home, then moved out and left him on the floor with a mattress and 10 cases of beer,” the statement says.
The woman said when she arrived Bob said was thirsty and asked her to get him a drink, but she wasn’t able to find a cup in the home. She retrieved a cup from her vehicle to get him water.
“He could not sit up or turn over or get up to use the restroom,” the officer wrote in the report. “He had to be put in dry clothes to be taken to the hospital by an ambulance crew.”
When Hannaford arrived at the home, he said he was immediately struck by the smell of the home.
“When I walked in the house to take photographs, I immediately smelled the odor of urine and observed no furniture. I turned the corner to the bedroom and observed full cases of beer stacked up in the hallway. When I walked into the bedroom, it smelled strongly of urine. I observed the mattress to be on the floor with what appeared to be a large urine stain approximately halfway down the mattress on the outer edge away from the wall. I observed empty Bud Light cans and some older looking jugs with what appeared to be urine in them on the opposite side of the room.”
According to an obituary published in the Jan. 26, 2022, edition of the Ozark County Times, Bob died Jan. 5. It’s unclear if the neglect from last November was a contributing factor.
On the Ozark County Sheriff’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.”