Jada Harris and Shy’Tiona Bishop, Florida health workers arrested abusing dementia patient on live stream at Melbourne nursing home because they thought it was funny.
‘Help me!’ Two Florida health workers have been arrested and charged with taunting and abusing an elderly female dementia patient at a Melbourne nursing home after live-streaming the incident on Snapchat.
Jada Harris, 18, and Shy’Tiona Jazziemysha Bishop, 20, both of Cocoa, were charged with video voyeurism, abuse of an elderly person and interception/disclosure of wire or oral communications, after Brevard County sheriff’s investigators received an anonymous tip about the incidents recorded April 3.
Harris and Bishop were arrested Friday and booked into the Brevard County Jail Complex in Sharpes and each held on $4,000 bail.
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey in a Facebook release described the two women as ‘vile.’
‘The local facility had no idea this was taking place,’ Ivey said over the weekend. ‘Abusing anyone is disgusting enough, but to make matters even worse, they livestreamed the abuse, they actually put it up … so that their friends could watch and laugh about it.’
‘Help me!’
At least four videos, some lasting as long as 37 seconds, were transmitted over the Snapchat, including some showing graphic images of the pair attempting to change the woman’s soiled clothing and sounds of the two laughing, records show. The unidentified woman could be heard screaming ‘No,’ repeatedly, off-camera.
Investigators said the two were working with a patient at the Market Street Memory Care facility, 6845 Murrell Rd., Melbourne. The assisted-living facility specializes in care of patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
In one clip shared with Harris’ followers, the victim is heard saying, ‘Help me,’ as Bishop says, ‘Ain’t no help.’ Harris can be seen walking toward the single bed, yanking back the sheet from the disabled woman and saying, ‘You making me mad now, let’s go,’ and ‘Don’t touch my phone.’
Investigators said Harris — listed as a nursing assistant in arrest reports — used her cellphone to record the live feeds.
The victim has been a patient at the facility since August 2022. She had been diagnosed with dementia but noted not to have any significant behavioral issues according to an arrest warrant.
The facility reported the next day that the patient was seen pacing back and forth and yelling, a sign she had been in distress, workers told investigators. Harris and Bishop were fired as soon as the facility found out about the abuse.
Ivey has asked his team to work closely with the state attorney’s office and the judicial system to make sure the two can never be involved in any type of health care again.
‘I wouldn’t let them care for a pet cobra, because he might accidentally bite them and he would die of scumbag poisoning,’ Ivey said. ‘Not only are they bags of crap, but the people that were on there laughing and mocking this poor lady, yeah, you’re bags of crap, too.’
