Death in trash-filled home shows difficulty of aiding solitary seniors
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Stanley Biolowas Jr.'s Ingram home was filled with trash when firefighters found his body Feb. 1, and he had been dead for some time.
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In between two pristinely kept homes in Ingram, Stanley Biolowas Jr. lived in a decaying two-story house filled with trash.
The windows in the rickety, grayish-brown facade were stuffed shut with orangish foam. Inside, debris crammed the home floor to ceiling and a pair of surveillance cameras stood sentry against thieves he feared would steal his possessions.
It was inside this home that the 90-year-old led a life of stubborn independence with no heat. And it was there in a room on the second floor that firefighters, wearing breathing masks to withstand the stench, found his body Feb. 1 after searching for four hours. He perished of heart disease, the medical examiner's office said, and had been dead for some time.
Neighbors said they sought help for the man, calling the Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging at least once. One neighbor reported someone on the street had called the county health department, though the department has no record of a report being made.
"There's been multiple attempts by multiple neighbors to get him some help," said Lori Kownacki, a former veterinary technician who now stays home to care for her two sons. She said she called the county Area Agency on Aging to report his situation, but the call-taker told her there was nothing to be done. "If something had been done awhile ago, it wouldn't have ended this way."
The case, in some ways, illustrates the difficulties in intervening when an elderly person suffers from self-neglect, a problem that in Mr. Bialowas' case was compounded by pathological hoarding, said Don Grant, a case manager with the Agency on Aging. Records show that if someone called to report he needed help, there was no report taken. The agency's only contact with him was last month at a West End senior center.
"It upsets me. It could have been something that we could have looked at," he said. "Perhaps it was preventable, perhaps not."
Mr. Grant said some studies estimate that as many as one in 190 seniors are suffering from abuse, neglect or self-neglect. His agency alone investigates some 1,500 cases a year.
Geraldine Chenot, a licensed psychologist and registered nurse who contracts with the county, is one of those on the front lines of those investigations. Accompanied by a social worker, she determines if an elderly person has his or her "capacities."
First Published February 12, 2012 12:00 am
