'Help me please': Man left mother, 82, on the floor for 14 hours after fall

A man left his elderly mother lying on the floor for 14 hours after she fell in the home where he was her carer.

Unable to get the 82-year-old to her feet, he dragged her from her bedroom to the lounge and ignored her pleas to get help.

It was about 7pm when the woman asked her son to get help from neighbours, but he refused.

Instead, he unplugged the landline and disconnected the Wi-Fi and when the woman messaged her daughter, “Help me please,” the message did not go through.

She remained on the floor for 14 hours until a granddaughter went to check on her after family members were unable to contact her.

According to the police summary of facts, the woman was found in a “very concerning state”, calling out for help, with no water and having soiled herself.

Her son was in another room at the time.

His mother was taken to hospital by ambulance and remained there for more than a week with “weeping sores” caused by lying on the floor for so long. The sores later became infected.

She suffered “major bruising” to her torso, legs, arms and hips and had scratches on her chest.

When spoken to by police, the 63-year-old son said how was he to know that a person should not be left on the floor for 14 hours?

The man cannot be named because doing so would identify his mother, who has name suppression.

He has now been sentenced in the Tauranga District Court for ill-treatment and neglect of a vulnerable adult.

The court heard he had “intentionally engaged in conduct, namely neglect, likely to cause [his mother] suffering”, and this conduct was a “major departure” from the standard of care expected of a reasonable person.

He was also charged with stealing his mother’s gold ring on August 29, 2025, which he then took to Cash Converters.

It cost the woman’s family members $175.50 to get the ring back from the business.

He told police he had intended to buy it back “within the month” and had only borrowed it to pawn for money for bills.

The man was also charged with possession of a methamphetamine pipe.

In court, his lawyer, Amy Baker, said he was trying to make “all efforts to better himself” and had completed a workshop while in prison.

“As has already been discussed, obviously methamphetamine is the driving factor behind what’s occurred here,” she said.

Baker noted that from her own observation, the man presented “entirely differently” than when she first met him in the police custody cells, which was indicative of the fact that “substance abuse was very much at the heart of the offending”.

Baker handed the judge a brief letter of remorse and apology from the man.

Judge Dean Blair had earlier this year given the man a sentence indication adopting a 24-month starting point.

The man had accepted the indication, and entered guilty pleas to the three charges.

The judge had been open to a sentence of home detention, but Baker said no suitable address was available.

The judge allowed a 20% discount for his guilty plea.

Judge Blair, noting the man had made comments to a pre-sentence report writer in which he challenged “some of the specifics” of what happened, said it was “too late for [the man] to give a different outline of what happened” because he had pleaded guilty to the summary of facts.

The report concluded that the man had a “lack of empathy and responsibility for the situation”, but it was common ground that he had been dealing with a “methamphetamine use issue” when the neglect occurred.

Judge Blair said that, before the incident, the man’s mother had been living in her own home, “where she felt secure”.

Now, her life had changed dramatically and she was living in permanent residential care, unable to return home.

“The loss of the home, familiar surroundings and way of life has been most difficult,” the judge said.

Her health had deteriorated and she felt “horrified” by what happened.

“The betrayal felt is difficult to put into words for her,” Judge Blair said.

The judge said the aggravating features were the breach of trust, the victim’s vulnerability, the degree of callousness in the man’s actions and the extent of the neglect and harm caused to the victim.

Once the guilty plea discount was applied, the end sentence was 20 months and two weeks’ imprisonment on the neglect charge.

He received two months’ imprisonment on each of the other charges, to be served concurrently.

The judge also ordered $176.50 in reparation to cover the cost incurred by the family in retrieving the woman’s gold ring and granted the woman a protection order.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.