(Photo credit: CBS17.com)
If anybody remembers anything about the 1999 movie, Fight Club, the first rule of fight club is to “don’t talk about fight club.”
It was a fictional movie, but three employees at a North Carolina assisted living facility were trying to make it into a real thing.
But that’s not the worst part: those employees are accused of running a fight club with their elderly residents with dementia, police said.
Marilyn Latish McKey, 32, Tonacia Yvonne Tyson, 20, and Taneshia Deshawn Jordan, 26, are facing assault charges, according to a police report.
They were workers at the Danby House in Winston-Salem in June when they didn’t intervene in a fight between two residents with dementia, according to a report from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
Staff members took video of the fight, which led to “one resident being strangled with her face turning red,” and shared it on social media, the state report says.
It happened when one resident hit another, and the report says staff members can be heard on video saying, “Punch her in the face.”
During the altercation, a staff member asked, “Are you recording? You gonna send it to me?” the report says.
The employees let the fight happen because one of the residents “always caused problems,” the state says.
The fighting incident wasn’t documented in the residents’ records, according to DHHS.
Winston-Salem police arrested the three women this month and charged them with misdemeanor “assault on an individual with a disability,” WGHP reports.
McKey faces an additional charge after she was accused of shoving one of the residents involved in the fight during a separate incident at the nursing home, according to the station.
Staff took video while McKey pushed the woman “into a room, turned off the light and yelled to the resident to go to sleep, and then closed the door leaving the resident in the dark room,” according to the report.
Also appearing on video was a resident who was on the floor and couldn’t get up, the report says.
Officials investigated the allegations, and “no injuries were reported or found,” according to WGHP.
The center says it has a “zero-tolerance policy for mistreatment of those in our care,” and it worked to implement leadership changes, “additional staff training and a more rigorous vetting process for all new and existing employees,” WGHP reports.
A state suspension that prevented Danby House from accepting new patients was in effect as of Friday, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Jordan, Tyson and McKey are expected to appear in court next month, records show.
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