Wednesday, March 16, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.
A certified personal care aide is charged with killing her quadriplegic ex-husband by drowning him in the bathtub, allegedly because he wanted to move into his own assisted living apartment which would have deprived her of the income she received for taking care of him.
Gloria Guzman, 25, is scheduled to appear in court this morning. Metro Police arrested her last Friday on a warrant filed March 9 charging her with murder.
She allegedly admitted to detectives that she intentionally drowned 40-year-old Mark Richards last month in anger.
"Guzman said she was very upset Richards was leaving and wanted to hurt him," the police report says.
However, Nick Sackerson, vice president of Southern Nevada Personal Care, which employed Guzman, doesn't believe she would harm anyone.
"Police were suspicious, but Gloria is a very nice young woman," he said. "As far as I'm concerned this was a terrible accident. She had nothing to gain."
According to the police report, Guzman called 911 the afternoon of Feb. 26 reporting that Richards was dead in the bathtub.
When medical personnel arrived, they found Guzman performing CPR on Richards, who was in a Roman-style tub that had been drained of water. Medics found the scene suspicious and called police.
The police investigation found that Richards was in a car collision in 1986 that left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Guzman and Richards met in 1999 at a California convalescent hospital. They moved to Las Vegas and married shortly thereafter. They divorced about two years later when they learned Guzman could not be paid by the state to care for her husband, but could be paid to care for someone to whom she is not related.
Police said Guzman went to work for Southern Nevada Personal Care as a certified personal care aide and was paid $844 every other week for taking care of Richards.
In recent months the couple had been fighting more, police said, and Richards decided to move into a Section 8 assisted living apartment, meaning Guzman would no longer be paid for caring for him.
On Feb. 26 about 9 a.m., Guzman put Richards in the non-handicap, Roman tub with a blue "noodle" flotation device around his back and under both arms and a white pillow under his feet.
She told police she was going back and forth from the bathroom to the living room, where her 8-year-old niece was running a fever.
Richards, who liked to soak in the tub for extended periods of time, asked for his medication about 12:30 p.m., Guzman told police, adding that she gave him one tablet each of Valium, Lortab and Baclofen.
Initially Guzman told police she left Richards alone for three minutes and when she returned he was underwater, but later she said she left him for 15 or 20 minutes, the police report says.
By the end of the first police interview, Guzman had said she neglected Richards, then admitted to intentionally causing him to drown, according to the police report.
"Guzman said she pulled the flotation device out from under his right arm and left the bathroom," the report notes. "Guzman said Richards didn't say anything when she did this, but he slid under the water and was making bubbling noises."
She had called 911 at 1:27 p.m. and was instructed through the steps of CPR even though she was certified in administering the procedure, police noted in the report.
Medical personnel determined Richards had been dead for 15 to 20 minutes when they arrived, and they got there six minutes after Guzman called. She told paramedics she had seen Richards talking and breathing 30 minutes to an hour before their arrival.
Guzman also told police she and Richards smoked methamphetamine the night before he died.
Despite what police allege, Sackerson doesn't believe that Guzman could hurt anyone, especially Richards, whom she loved, he said.
Medicaid, which pays the agency to train personal care aides, did its own investigation and uncovered no wrongdoing. A social worker who also checked in on the couple found nothing untoward in their relationship, he said.
"The flotation device just had to keep his head out of the water, and evidently it slipped to the side," Sackerson said. "It will be a long time before Gloria recovers from this."
archive
