NEWPORT — A Campbell County grand jury Thursday indicted a son accused of failing to take care of his mother.

        Bonnie Sarakatsannis, 69, spent about three weeks last summer, from Aug. 20 to Sept. 10, lying on a sheet in the garage of her cat-infested Fort Thomas home, suffering from an untreated broken hip and bedsores.

Sarakatsannis

        Fort Thomas police charged Phillip Sarakatsannis, 32, after being notified of the elderly woman's condition by officials at St. Elizabeth Medical Center, where she was taken by her son Sept. 10. She died at the hospital Sept. 30.

        The felony indictment for abuse of an adult by a caretaker says Mr. Sarakatsannis wantonly neglected his mother. Police records say she was injured in a fall at her son's home in Southgate and was taken to the Fort Thomas home, which had neither electricity nor water service.

        After being told of Mrs. Sarakatsannis' condition, Fort Thomas police and animal control officers went to the house on Scenic View Drive and removed more than 100 cats, some of them dead.

        The city condemned the house, primarily because the interior had been destroyed by the cats. The walls and floors reportedly were permeated with cat urine and feces, and the animals had torn through the walls and had moved through the house behind the walls and through air ducts.

        The house, valued for tax purposes by the county Property Valuation Administrator at $167,000, was ordered demolished by the city's code enforcement officer.

        However, Mr. Sarakatsannis successfully appealed that order. The city's housing appeals board permitted him to hire a Fairfield company to perform an ecological cleanup inside the residence, and a total reconstruction of the interior and some exterior work. The exterior work is under way.

        Police said Mrs. Sarakatsannis told them from her hospital bed her son was not responsible for her injuries, and that she insisted on going to her house and staying in the garage after she was injured because she wanted to be near her cats.

        Mr. Sarakatsannis provided food and drink for his mother while she was in the garage. Police said he went to work each day and returned to the Fort Thomas house each night and slept in the garage with his mother.

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