Three Louisville Balfour employees accused of fabricating domestic violence allegations

Mitchell Byars, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.
·2 min read
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Mar. 16—Three employees of the Balfour Senior Living Facility are facing charges after reportedly making a false domestic violence report that caused an elderly man to be arrested.

Joshua Ryan Merrill, 34, and Kara Shea Roberts, 33, are facing charges of attempt to influence a public servant, false reporting to authorities, false reporting — abuse of an at-risk elder and caretaker neglect.

Dainzu Salinas Mosqueda, 31, is facing a charge of failure as a mandatory reporter.

Merrill and Mosqueda have been taken into custody, while court records show the warrant for Roberts remains active. All three were given or will be given personal recognizance bonds.

Officials with Balfour have not yet returned requests for comment.

According to an affidavit, Mosqueda called Louisville police on Jan. 10 and said Merrill and Roberts had seen a man hit his wife, who was a resident at the Balfour facility.

Both Roberts and Merrill confirmed with police they saw the man smack his wife on separate occasions.

The woman, who has memory issues, could not remember her husband's name nor any person hitting her when police talked to her, but based on the witnesses police took the man into custody.

But when police returned to the facility to pick up surveillance footage on Jan. 24, Mosqueda said she had reviewed the footage and found out that the assaults that Merrill and Roberts reported did not actually happen.

Mosqueda said she had discovered the discrepancy the day after the report more than two weeks prior, but did not tell police on the orders of her "VP of operations." Mosqueda said she was also told not to allow police to review the security footage and just tell police nothing had happened.

According to the affidavit, Mosqueda gave officers a USB drive that contained video of the video surveillance rather than the surveillance video itself.

Noting the quality was not high enough to see, a sergeant requested to see the footage onsite. When the sergeant reviewed the footage, it confirmed that the man never hit his wife at the times and places that Merrill and Roberts alleged.

"At this point I realized none of the statements made against (the husband) were true," the sergeant wrote in the report.

According to the affidavit, Roberts was a third-party contractor and was not retained, while Merrill and Mosqueda were still employees at the time their warrants were issued.

Balfour is also currently facing a lawsuit after a woman died at another one of its Louisville facilities.