A woman arrested in Cass County for elder abuse and theft of a controlled substance is heading to prison. 39 year old Bethany S. Mellor of Rushville was sentenced to 3 ½ years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for elder abuse and neglect after pleading guilty to the Class 3 felony back in January. Mellor was originally set to be sentenced in March for the plea but COVID-19 restrictions had continually delayed the hearing.
Mellor was arrested on May 2nd, 2019 in Cass County by sheriff’s deputies after video evidence of the nurse was found of her stealing Alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax, from a medicine cabinet at Walker Nursing Home in Virginia. Mellor was charged with senior abuse and neglect for taking the medication and not giving it to the patient it was prescribed to as well as theft.
In January 2019 prior to the incident, Mellor had been issued a discipline report from Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation which placed her nursing license on probation for a minimum of 3 years after she plead guilty to one count of unlawful possession of cannabis, a class A misdemeanor at the time, and was sentenced to Cass County Court supervision on December 11th, 2017. Mellor is reported to have called in fraudulent prescriptions at the Beardstown Walmart for medications while employed as a registered nurse at the JBS facility in Beardstown for the 2017 court ruling. Mellor officially had her R.N. License suspended by IDFPR on June 24th, 2019.
In the Walker Nursing Home incident, Mellor was also sentenced to 1 year mandatory supervised release, given credit for 1 day served, a $1,000 county fine, plus additional fees and court costs. Mellor was remanded to the Schuyler County Jail pending extradition to the Illinois Department of Corrections.