A Georgia woman died last week when she fell in her front yard and was unable to move.
WGXA reported that 74-year-old Maria Riffe died when she fell from her walkway trying to help her husband, Roy Riffe.
Investigators said 86-year-old Roy Riffe was in a motorized wheelchair going down the walkway when he ran off the walk and fell out of his chair.
Maria Riffe came out with a walker, which she needed to get around, to help her husband but also fell off the walkway.
Maria Riffe was only wearing a house dress.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said he thinks that Maria Riffe died from hypothermia because of the cold night temperatures. No autopsy has been performed yet.
Roy Riffe only survived because he was wearing a jacket and fleece pants.
"Unfortunately, the sheriff's office gets calls every day to check on elderly people who live alone," Sills said. "And oftentimes we get there only to find that that elderly person, the ones who truly live by themselves alone, unfortunately, are dead."
The Riffes' neighbor, Crystal Pittman, lives just up the road from the elderly couple.
"I'm devastated, devastated," Pittman said. "First of all that nobody told me, I had no idea, and it makes me really sad that Ms. Maria died that way, and that nobody was able to find her."
The neighbors on either side of the Riffes' home do not live there full time, so it is likely that no one could hear any calls for help.
Sills said that those with elderly relatives or neighbors should give them a way to get help, such as a cell phone or emergency alert device.
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