Hoarder pulled from trash-filled home to intensive care died Saturday

By Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The 38-year-old Sandy Springs woman who was extricated June 22 through "chest-high" debris in the house she grew up in died Saturday at Northside Hospital.

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Christian Boone Mary Minter’s Sandy Springs home was cleaned after she was found trapped inside within mounds of debris.

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Mary Minter was taken to the hospital after Sandy Springs rescue personnel responded to an anonymous 911 call. The cause of death was "alcoholic liver disease," the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office told the AJC on Tuesday.

It took firefighters 40 minutes to wade through "chest-high" debris that clogged the hallways of Minter's modest residence, located in the Cherokee Park neighborhood just off Roswell Road.

At the time, Sandy Springs Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Scarbrough described the smell as "intolerable," though he didn't have to navigate his way through the trash. The firefighters who did had to be decontaminated, Scarbrough told the AJC. The Kitty Hawk Drive home, shrouded in overgrown ivy, was condemned but last week work crews came and cleaned up the property.

According to public records, Minter's parents moved into the home in 1985. Her father died in 1996, five years before her mother passed away. Minter was CEO and secretary of the Minter Family Foundation, according to Guidestar, which supplies information about nonprofits. Public records reveal she had been slapped with multiple federal and state tax liens.