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A cruel daughter has been jailed after allowing her vulnerable, disabled mother to die in her own filth.
Colleen Sayegh, 38, pleaded guilty to negligent care of a dependent person and was sentenced to between 15 months to eight years in prison earlier this month.
Officers found her tragic mum at a home in Pennsylvania barely responsive on July 19, 2022. She was suffering from numerous open wounds - including one that was the size of a fist - and was dehydrated with "extremely low" blood pressure, according to local reports.
The woman, a wheelchair user, "had open wounds covering her entire right side that were foul smelling and indicated she had not been moved," and was soiled with faeces and urine. She heartbreakingly died two days after she was found by police.
After searching the home, police reported she was living in "deplorable conditions with animal faeces covering the floor and a foul odour."
She had become wheelchair-bound and had weakness in her right side after a stroke in February 2021, their investigation found, Law and Crime reports.
The court heard how her daughter felt she had her mother's situation under control and tried to treat the sores but her mother began "wailing" in pain whenever she touched them.
Sayegh admitted she had not bathed her mother, who also suffered from diabetes, in months and had not taken her to a doctor in over a year.
An autopsy determined the victim died of sepsis that was caused by a skin infection, likely coming from the faeces and urine she was lying in.
If Sayegh bathed her mum, her chances of survival would have been much higher, the medical examiner stated.
At her sentencing, Sayegh told a judge her mother 'kept refusing treatment,' but Judge Jackie Atherton Bernard replied saying: "we don't even treat animals like this."
"Your actions are selfish," the judge added. "You chose to take care of yourself and your own medical needs while you left your mother to rot."
She was sentenced to between 15 months and up to eight years in prison, but people are up in arms that she wasn't sent down for longer.
LawandOrder reader David Netzoff fumed: "She's lucky I'm not the Sentencing Judge, she'd be spending far more than Eight Years behind bars."
While RamboJohnJ wrote: "She has dead eyes. Not an ounce of remorse."