DOCUMENT: Florida, Crime

Cops: Daughter Dumped Mom, 73, From Wheelchair

Woman pushed kin off the curb "for 52 years of shit"

Kiss of Death

View Document

Daughter Abuses Mom

MAY 27--After celebrating her 52nd birthday with family members at a restaurant, an intoxicated Florida woman allegedly pushed her wheelchair-bound mother off the curb, causing the elderly woman to fall “head first into the cement,” police charge.

As she pushed the wheelchair off the curb, Patricia Tavernier said, “For 52 years of shit,” according to Tavernier’s sister, who is quoted as a witness in an arrest affidavit.

Tavernier, seen at right, was arrested late Friday night for aggravated battery on a person over 65, a felony. She was also charged with misdemeanor battery for striking her sister in the face with a camera.

Upon arriving at the Ruby Street Grille, a Tavares Police Department officer spotted “an empty wheelchair and an elderly person later identified as Karen Judge lying in the street in front of the chair in the fetal position.” Judge, 73, had been staying with Tavernier while recuperating from a broken hip.

A restaurant employee and Tavernier’s sister, Theresa Booth, told police that they saw Tavernier causer her mother to topple to the pavement. Judge, cops noted, told emergency service workers that Tavernier had “intentionally dumped her out of the chair.”

Booth said that her sister “became drunk and upset” at the birthday dinner. As the family departed the restaurant, added Booth, she witnessed Tavernier “trip their mother onto the pavement, saying, ‘For 52 years of shit’ as she did it.”

Tavernier was booked into the Lake County jail, from which she was released Saturday afternoon on $20,500 bond. She is scheduled for a June 16 Circuit Court arraignment. (2 pages)