Police raid 3rd illegal home for mentally ill; operator in jail

The operator of one or more unlicensed homes for the mentally ill in Barrow County was arrested overnight after four of his Barrow County clients were discovered abandoned in a Winder home with no food and no heat.

Sheriff Jud Smith said Marlo Yarbrough was charged with four counts of reckless conduct and was booked into to the Barrow County Detention Center, where he remained incarcerated Saturday afternoon.

Family members of the alleged victims told the Barrow Journal on Saturday morning that only four of the nine mentally ill residents that had been housed in two homes in the Cambridge Estates subdivision had been accounted for last night. The whereabouts of the other five were not known, and they apparently do not have their psychiatric medications, sources said.

The residents told their family members that Yarbrough or his relatives had suddenly ordered them out of the Cambridge Estates homes on Friday and had dropped them off at a house on Northcrest Drive in Winder. The home had electricity and water, but no gas heat and no refrigerator or food or blankets.

The frightened mentally ill men and women kept warm by huddling around the open oven door. The house was only partially furnished. In the bedrooms were mattresses on the floors but no linens.

Yarbrough reportedly brought the residents fast food late Friday night and gave one or more of them their psychiatric medications, but he then took the medications with him and left.

Shortly after that, officers from the Winder Police Department and the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office descended on the Winder home. They contacted Yarbrough and demanded that he return to the home. Within five minutes of his arrival, he was in handcuffs, a witness said.

The witness said the police officers and deputies were very compassionate to the residents, accompanying them to the homes on Downing Drive and Otis Drive to retrieve their belongings. Two of the four residents at the house in Winder were picked up by family members. Two others were turned over to the woman who had referred them to Yarbrough and his family for care.

For more on this developing situation, read the Nov. 16 edition of the Barrow Journal.