Lexington caregiver sentenced to prison for abusing wife

May 29—LEXINGTON — As Lovella Vickery's health deteriorated she grew more and more dependent on her husband of 38 years.

Vickery, 59, was blind and diabetic and suffered from lupus. She was on dialysis and had congestive heart failure.

Someone had to care for her. Someone had to buy groceries and pick up her eight medications and take her to the doctor.

Thomas Vickery was that man until April of 2022, when it was like "someone flipped a switch," Lovella Vickery testified at his preliminary hearing in June 2022.

"He changed," she said. "He got angry all the time, would scream and threaten all of us, wanted us dead, is what he told us. He wanted us away, wanted us gone."

The threats were specific, she testified.

"We'd all be leaving in body bags," she said. "He was going to throw me over the bridge. If anybody came there he was going to kill everybody."

On two separate occasions between April and June of 2022, Thomas Vickery punched his wife in the mouth, she testified. Then he would take away her phones "because he didn't want me to call 911 or get any help," she testified.

"Call 911 and you'll die," he told her.

On June 15, following the second punch, deputies from the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call hang up at the Vickery residence, according to a court affidavit.

Thomas Vickery was arrested and taken to jail. On June 18, 2022, prosecutors charged Vickery with abuse by caretaker, a felony, verbal abuse by caretaker, a misdemeanor, and disrupting, preventing or interrupting an emergency telephone call, a misdemeanor.

Earlier this month, the defendant pleaded guilty to each of the counts and was sentenced by District Judge Thad Balkman to two years in prison and two years probation for the felony.

Balkman sentenced Vickery to one year in prison for each on the misdemeanor counts. The sentences will be served concurrently, court records show.