83-Year-Old Alzheimer's Patient Dies After 1,000 Fire Ant Bites at South Carolina Nursing Home, Family Sues

Shelba Catterton couldn't call for help. She was 83, nonverbal, and living with advanced Alzheimer's at Harmony at West Ashley, a memory care facility in Charleston, South Carolina. On the night of July 23, 2026, she walked out through a courtyard door an employee had propped open, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed August 19 by her family and reported by the Post and Courier.

She was found around 12:15 a.m. on July 24, lying on top of a fire ant hill, swarmed. Because of her condition, she could not cry out or brush the insects off herself, the lawsuit alleges. Her family's attorney, Nate Hughey, estimates she was bitten and stung more than 1,000 times, based on the two-hour window investigators believe she was outside.

A Harmony employee's 911 call, obtained by the Post and Courier, gives a plain description of what staff found. "She was found outside and, I guess, a bunch of ants were on her. She has bumps all over her back, all over her face, it's pretty bad," the employee told the dispatcher. "They really did eat up on her."

A critical detail emerged in the lawsuit: that 911 call didn't happen until midday on July 25, roughly 36 hours after Catterton was found on the ant pile. The lawsuit says the call only came because her daughter, Jan Buice, arrived for a scheduled visit and demanded staff take her mother to the hospital. The dispatcher had no idea a day and a half had already passed, according to the Post and Courier.

By the time Catterton reached Roper St. Francis Bon Secours' intensive care unit, she was hypothermic, her body temperature down to 94.4 degrees, and showing signs of sepsis from infected wounds, according to medical records cited in the lawsuit. One doctor spent more than half an hour cleaning and bandaging her bites. She was later diagnosed with pneumonia and, according to attorney Hughey, was in organ failure by the time she died at Lowcountry Community Hospice House in Summerville on August 7.

Police reports show the Charleston Police Department found a fire ant pile in the area where Catterton was discovered, and investigators interviewed a physician who had prescribed Benadryl cream after getting a voicemail about the incident around the time Buice was visiting on July 25. That doctor's notes indicate the facility never told him how severe the bites actually were, and he tried calling back, according to the Post and Courier. Police served search warrants at the facility hours before Catterton died. The Charleston County Coroner's Office says autopsy and toxicology results are still pending.

Catterton's daughters say Harmony's silence made things worse. "I was horrified," Buice told NBC affiliate WCBD. "I just can't tell you how horrified I was. Nobody should ever go through something like that." Her sister, Sherri Lero, described the aftermath: "Horrendous is what it's been. To watch your mom go from a walking individual to being in a bed, grasping for air."

The family says they paid Harmony about $6,300 a month for four years to care for their mother, according to reporting from unilad. The lawsuit accuses the facility of negligence, wrongful death, and violating South Carolina regulations that require secure units for residents with Alzheimer's and dementia. Those rules exist precisely because people like Catterton can wander and can't protect themselves once they do.

A Harmony spokesperson offered condolences to the family in a statement to WCBD but stopped short of addressing the specific allegations, citing the pending litigation. Harmony Senior Services did not respond to a separate request for comment from the Post and Courier. No criminal charges have been filed as of this writing, and the Charleston Police Department's investigation remains open.

This is a facility that exists for one job: keeping vulnerable, wandering-prone residents safe behind locked doors. A propped-open door at 10:30 p.m. isn't a freak accident. It's a lapse that state regulations were written to prevent, and a 36-hour delay before anyone called 911 allowed the situation to worsen significantly.

The question ahead is what the Charleston County Coroner's autopsy and toxicology results will show about the direct cause of death, and whether the state's health regulators or prosecutors take any action against Harmony beyond the civil suit already filed. The case is now in the hands of the Charleston County court system.