Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown announced a string of convictions for abuse of vulnerable adults in Maryland. The cases spanned three jurisdictions including Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, and Howard County. All the cases were prosecuted by the OAG’s Medicaid Fraud and Vulnerable Victims Unit, which focuses on the abuse or neglect of vulnerable adults in Maryland’s long-term care and Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA) program facilities. In December 2021, an employee at an assisted living facility in the 800 block of Ritchie Highway in Severna Park, viewed a video on her Instagram feed that depicted another employee, the defendant, Jnae Armani Alston, 28, of Baltimore, Maryland, taunting an 80-year-old resident with Alzheimer’s in the same assisted living facility where she worked. The employee immediately reported what she saw to her supervisor. That employee later learned of a second video, also posted on Instagram, that showed Alston taunting another resident, an 80-year-old dementia patient, and pushing the resident to the ground. Both videos were posted on Baltimore Murder Inc., a local Instagram account about crime in Baltimore.
The posts garnered thousands of views before they were taken down. Alston pled guilty to two counts of abuse of a vulnerable adult before the Honorable Stacy W. McCormack of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. On January 23, 2024, Judge McCormack sentenced Alston to ten years in jail, suspending all but six months, representing a five year, suspend all but three- month sentence for each victim, to run consecutively. Judge McCormack also ordered that Alston be placed on five years of supervised probation, during which time she is prohibited from providing direct care to vulnerable adults and from working for any healthcare provider who receives state or federal funds.
