Safeguards ignored in string of assisted living tragedies

Rob Barry, Michael Sallah and Carol Marbin Miller | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: April 30, 2011 06:41:16 PM

MIAMI — For more than a decade, Bruce Hall ran his assisted-living facility in Florida's Panhandle like a prison camp.

He punished his disabled residents by refusing to give them food and drugs. He threatened them with a stick. He doped them with powerful tranquilizers and, when they broke his rules, he beat them — sending at least one to the hospital.

"The conditions in the facility are not fit even for a dog," one caller told state agents.

When Florida regulators confronted Hall in 2004 over a litany of abuses at his facility, they said, he chased them from the premises while railing against government intrusion.