Summerville Police received a report this week about a disturbing case of elder abuse. 

According to the report, a hospice worker came to the police department to report that one of her patients had suffered abrasions as the result of a physical altercation with a family member.  The nurse told police that she noticed the abrasions on the elderly man’s arms and asked the family what had happened.  Family members told the nurse that the patient’s grandson had attacked him earlier this week.  They told the nurse that the grandson had attempted to hit the elderly man with a rake and did hit him several times with a broom.

The nurse showed police pictures of the eighty-seven-year-old man’s wounds.  The report from the Summerville Police Department said the wounds were “serious in nature.”

Police went and spoke with the elderly man and learned that the man’s grandson, identified as eighteen-year-old Jayden Matthew Barnett, was not supposed to be around the elderly man and his wife.  A criminal trespass warrant was taken out against the grandson earlier.

When police spoke with Barnett, he told police that his grandfather “started it”.   Barnett was arrested and charged with exploitation of an elderly person and battery and was booked into the Chattooga County Jail.