Aide pleads guilty to spraying bleach into face of patient at Cherry Hill nursing home
Simone Goldsboro, working as a certified nurse's aide, assaulted a patient at a Cherry Hill nursing home in 2023, prosecutors said.
A Camden woman working as a certified nurse’s aide admitted to spraying bleach into the face and eyes of a paralyzed elderly patient at a Cherry Hill nursing home, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said Thursday.
Simone Goldsboro, 37, pleaded guilty before Superior Court Judge Kurt E. Kramer in Camden to third-degree aggravated assault and fourth-degree assault upon an institutionalized elderly person.
State prosecutors will recommend that Goldsboro be sentenced to 364 days in jail in Camden County, Davenport said.
Goldsboro, who will permanently forfeit her license to be a certified nurse’s aide, is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30.
Erin Yerke, an assistant deputy defender representing Goldsboro, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
In 2023, prosecutors said, Goldsboro worked as a certified nurse’s aide at the Avista Healthcare Nursing Home in Cherry Hill.
On Aug. 17, 2023, Goldsboro was taking care of a patient who was more than 60 years old and was paralyzed on one side of her body from a stroke, prosecutors said.
“Goldsboro admitted she used more force than necessary while undressing D.S. so she could clean her and then left the room to retrieve a spray bottle containing bleach from the custodian’s cart,” the attorney general’s office said.
Goldsboro then intentionally sprayed bleach into the patient’s face and eyes, the attorney general’s office said.
“We have to trust the people who care for our loved ones at residential facilities,” Davenport said in a statement. “This defendant exploited that trust and physically assaulting a paralyzed patient in her care. We will not tolerate the abuse of elderly and vulnerable individuals, especially by those entrusted with their care.”
