This item is horrific, and, I’m sure, will be troubling to most readers. It certainly is to me.

SPEEDWELL — A mile outside this Wythe County crossroads, Deputy Bryan Bard responded to a call that 65-year-old Esther Crigger was dead.

He headed toward the Criggers' crumbling mobile home where he had broken up fights and served warrants several times in the past. Each time, the dirt and the smell of dogs and chickens that lived in the trailer had left him stunned.

Bard pulled up to the trailer. Inside, he found Esther Crigger lying on a dirty mattress on the floor, surrounded by a pack of dogs eating her body.

Then Bard looked to his left and saw Crigger's 37-year-old son Don standing at the stove about 10 feet from his mother. He was eating eggs from a pan.

After Bard told Don to help shoo away the dogs, he looked at Esther.

The dogs had chewed on her left arm. Her thumb was gone. The oxygen machine that helped her breathe was silent. Its electrical cord was lying on the floor, unplugged.

This is like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The human reaction, I suppose, is to look for someone to blame. There really isn’t anyone, though. It’s just depressing.

Six months later, the prosecution suspended its case against the Criggers. All three (the father and two adult sons) were found incompetent to stand trial. Don moved in with a friend. Dan and Elmer went home to their trailer. Their lives soon returned to the way they were before their mug shots were published in local newspapers and a television news truck camped out on their neighbor's lawn.

Who, if anyone, could have saved (Esther) from such a horrific end? What is life like today as her son and husband cope with the same conditions that may have contributed to her death — and the lingering stigma in the small community where they have spent their whole lives?

Asbury Place at Wytheville is a brick building with white columns and a grassy yard with blooming flowers. Esther Crigger lived on the nursing home's second floor in unit C for about eight months before she returned home just four days before she died.

She had severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a debilitating lung disease that left her coughing, wheezing and unable to catch her breath. When she arrived at the home, she could not stand or feed herself.

In hindsight, it is easy to question the decision not to check on Esther Crigger immediately after the Asbury call came in, Hall said. But ultimately, he believes the agency is not to blame for her death.

"The choice was up to her," he said. "Mentally competent adults have the right to make choices that you or I might not consider good choices."

It seems so ironic that Mrs. Crigger was deemed competent enough to decide to leave the nursing home and return to her home in Speedwell… and yet her sons and husband aren’t competent enough to stand trial for neglect. I'm not being sarcastic. If you read the article, I'm sure you'll agree that they clearly aren't capable of understaning what has happened.

I don’t know what the answer is in cases like this. Conservatives take a bad rap by people who believe we’re opposed to all forms of welfare and social support. That’s not the case. We’re opposed to rampant welfare abuse, but we’re not opposed to helping people who really need it.

It seems like the Criggers don’t know how to get by one their own. It seems to me that they need help. But what do you do? Do you arrest them and make them wards of the state against their will? Do you hold them prisoner, knowing full well that they’ll leave and go back to their way of life if they get the chance?

Do you stand by and watch them live and die this way?

What do you do?