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Deputy: Home for disabled in filthy state

Dog waste and cigarette ends litter the Spring Hill home, deputies say. The owner is arrested, accused of hitting a resident.

By STEVE THOMPSON
Published September 24, 2005

SPRING HILL - A deputy dispatched to a complaint of battery found more than that late Thursday at a home for disabled adults run by a man with a criminal history that includes a sex offense, a battery, a hit-and-run and two DUI arrests.

The Dalberth Family Care Home houses at least three disabled adults, a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report says.

According to the report:

The owner and caregiver, Francis Herman Dalberth, was drunk. The home smelled of feces, and there were piles of it in the living room, from the nine dogs there. Cigarette butts and ashes covered the kitchen table. Other rooms were in disarray.

The deputy spoke to Dalberth, who the report says stumbled, smelled like beer, and slurred his words.

Deputy Paul Downey also spoke to one of the disabled residents, a 30-year-old man in a wheelchair with a brain injury from a car crash.

The man said Dalberth confronted him because he had brought pizza home, while Dalberth had made something else for everybody to eat.

The ensuing scuffle put a cut under the man's eye, left there by Dalberth's hand, the report says.

Dalberth, 53, told the deputy that the man, who has limited use of his arms, had used his legs to grab him first.

Dalberth, who lives at the home on 15741 Lancer Road, was arrested just after midnight on a charge of abuse on a disabled adult. He was held in the county jail Friday on $15,000 bail.

State records show he was sentenced to six months of probation in 1987 for a charge involving "lewd unnatural sex." In 1989, he was sentenced to six more months of probation for a charge of battery. In 2001, he pleaded guilty in a hit-and-run that left property damage. And twice this year - in March and again Sept. 3 - he was arrested on DUI charges. The records do not show whether the DUI charges have been resolved.

Dalberth is a certified nursing assistant. But it was not clear late Friday whether the home was licensed by the state, and if so, how, considering Dalberth's criminal record. A spokesman for the state Department of Children and Families could not immediately be reached. According to the Sheriff's Office report, the deputy spoke with a DCF investigator, who said that he had an open case on the home and had been there a week ago, and that he would return there Friday.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified September 24, 2005, 01:00:22]