A New Jersey licensed nurse has been indicted on charges that she kept her developmentally disabled adopted daughter locked in a bathroom fo...
A New Jersey licensed nurse has been indicted on charges that she kept her developmentally disabled adopted daughter locked in a bathroom for nearly a year.
Lisa M. Bullock-DeLorenzo, 43, was charged in March after an anonymous tipster reported that the 27-year-old victim was being kept in the bathroom with no lights, window or working toilet.
The five-by-eight bathroom also had no running water, NJ.com reports.
When Pennsville police officers arrived at the woman's Pennsville Township residence, they discovered that the second-floor bathroom was locked from the outside.
Inside, they found a weak and malnourished woman who was covered in feces and urine. Police said that the room reeked of the feces, as well.
The woman was left with only a towel, a bow of food and adult diapers.
After being taken to a hospital for treatment, the victim was placed in another home, police shared.
The victim had previously wandered off from home, court records show, when she ran away in April 2019 and was found along a township road.
It was then that the woman was locked away in the bathroom.
'Defendant would keep the victim locked in the bathroom while she was not home,' an affidavit of probable cause stated. Bullock-DeLorenzo did occasionally 'throw diapers in the bathroom and tell her to go in them.'
Police said the woman had to sleep in the bathroom with no pillow or blanket.
'It's a horror story,' Pennsville Police Chief Allen J. Cummings said at the time. 'The living conditions were just horrible.'
Bullock-DeLorenzo was indicted last week on charges of third-degree criminal restraint, third-degree reckless endangerment of another person and fourth-degree endangering the welfare of the elderly or the disabled.
The registered nurse had adopted the woman and three men after their previous caretaker - who she had been married too - died of cancer, according to authorities sources.
Police said that there was no real indication that the men had been mistreated. One of them, who is also developmentally disabled, was placed in a new home as well.
Bullock-DeLorenzo was previously confirmed as being an LPN by the New Jersey Board of Nursing. Her license remains active, expiring in May 31, 2021.
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