Allegheny County prosecutors will not file charges against a 92-year-old man with dementia who police say pushed 80-year-old Joan Sterling to the ground at Asbury Heights, a senior living facility on Bower Hill Road in Mt. Lebanon. Sterling broke her hip in the fall on June 11 and died on July 27, and the county medical examiner’s office has since classified her death as a homicide.
The decision not to prosecute came after consultation between prosecutors and Allegheny County police, according to TribLIVE. Rebecca Spangler, the Allegheny County district attorney’s chief of staff, said the man who pushed Sterling is not competent to proceed to trial and that intent could not be established. Both men and women involved in the incident resided in the same memory care unit at Asbury Heights, where Sterling had lived for five years.
What Happened at Asbury Heights
Allegheny County police spokesman Jim Madalinsky said an elderly male resident pushed Sterling, and the incident took place in a common area of the facility with staff present. Mt. Lebanon police requested assistance from county detectives after the incident occurred, the outlet reports. Madalinsky explained that a homicide ruling indicates a death was caused by another individual’s actions, but he noted that such a ruling is not a declaration of criminal guilt.
Sterling’s death resulted from blunt impact injuries to her neck and hip, per the same account. Her niece, Carole Salvato, told the outlet she was informed by the medical examiner’s office on October 7 that the death would be listed as a homicide. Salvato said she does not believe the man had ill intent and does not blame the Asbury Heights facility for what happened.
A Legacy in Pittsburgh Classrooms
Sterling grew up in Mt. Lebanon and spent more than 30 years working in the Pittsburgh Public Schools system, starting as a classroom teacher before becoming principal of the North Side’s Conroy Education Center. The school is a special education facility that supports students requiring life skills support, autistic support, and multiple disability support, according to the report. Sterling had Alzheimer’s disease and had lived in Asbury Heights’ memory care unit for five years before her death.
Holly Villella, Asbury Heights’ executive director, declined to comment on the case, the outlet reports. Pennsylvania’s Mental Health Procedures Act allows a person charged with a crime to be found substantially unable to understand the nature or object of criminal proceedings, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the kind of standard that appears to underpin the competency determination in Sterling’s case.
A Pattern Seen Beyond Mt. Lebanon
Sterling’s death echoes a pattern documented nationally in dementia-care settings. KFF Health News has reported that residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias make up more than 900,000 of the 2.2 million people living in long-term care settings nationwide. In Minnesota, a resident named Gladys Lynch was shoved by another resident at a memory-care facility and died five days later, a death also ruled a homicide. In California, a resident at Sunrise Post Acute in Banning allegedly punched his roommate, Attilio Cecchetto, who died two days later from blunt-force facial trauma.
Research cited in that reporting suggests such incidents are far from rare. A Cornell University study estimated that one in seven assisted-living residents experienced aggression within a month, while a separate Cornell study of 10 New York nursing homes estimated that one in five residents experienced an altercation in a given month. Cornell researchers also estimated that 4% of assisted-living residents and 5% of nursing-home residents experienced physical assaults within a month, and a national CDC survey-data analysis found that nearly 8% of assisted-living residents engaged in physical aggression or abuse toward other residents or staff.
Federal oversight data points to the same trend. Since the beginning of 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has cited nursing homes at least 700 times for failing to protect residents from physical, sexual, or verbal abuse by other residents, and in the first three months of 2026, federal inspectors cited nursing homes for resident-to-resident altercations more often than for any other type of mistreatment.
