Park Circle Home caregivers charged as DPH ignored years of warnings

The Systemic Failure at Park Circle Home

In November 2024, Rodney Creel checked into the Park Circle Home in North Charleston, seeking post-surgical recovery care for his shoulder. Just one month later, his sister, Robyn Empey, found him in an intensive care unit, emaciated and septic. By his 70th birthday, Creel was dead. His experience was not an isolated incident of neglect, but the tragic culmination of years of documented warnings that the state failed to act upon until it was far too late.

The criminal charges now facing caregivers Wilhelmina Rellora, Cynthia Kelly, and Reginald Kelly follow a grueling investigation into the deaths of Creel and another resident, Thaddeus Moose. While these individuals face potential decades in prison for abuse, neglect, and kidnapping, the regulatory oversight that allowed Park Circle Home to remain open for years remains a point of intense scrutiny. According to reports from WCSC, the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) held hundreds of pages of complaints dating back to 2021, yet the facility’s license was only revoked in April 2026.

A History of Ignored Warnings

Public records requests have peeled back the curtain on a facility that was, by many accounts, operating in a state of chronic dysfunction. Inspection reports from 2021 noted that residents appeared lethargic and unresponsive, while 2022 filings suggested that staff were potentially drugging residents to ensure compliance or using intimidation to keep them from speaking out. By 2025, the records include chilling allegations that the head of the house had threatened a resident with a hammer.

Despite this trail of red flags, DPH maintained that the receipt of a violation report did not necessitate immediate enforcement. Instead, the agency relied on a process where facilities submitted written plans of correction. For families like the Empeys, this administrative process proved fatal. Robyn Empey, who reported her concerns to the state immediately following her brother’s death in 2024, describes a sense of profound betrayal by the very institutions designed to protect the vulnerable.

The Jurisdictional Gap in Vulnerable Adult Care

The prosecution of the Park Circle caregivers is being handled by the Attorney General’s Vulnerable Adults and Medicaid Provider Fraud Unit, not the regulatory body that oversees facility licensing. John Frampton, the unit’s chief investigator, noted that his team focuses exclusively on criminal allegations, leaving the day-to-day quality of care in the hands of DPH.

“We don’t do anything regulatory; we’re criminal. So, we’ll only take those allegations of a criminal nature. Quality of care, that is DPH,” Frampton explained.

Since 2022, Frampton’s team has made 173 arrests related to Medicaid fraud and the abuse of vulnerable adults. These numbers highlight a recurring pattern: crimes against the elderly and disabled often occur in isolation, hidden from public view and without witnesses, making the role of proactive state oversight essential.

Lack of Transparency in South Carolina Facilities

As the legal proceedings against the former Park Circle Home staff move forward, the broader question remains whether the state will overhaul the oversight mechanisms that allowed such egregious conditions to persist for half a decade.