Two black nursing home workers have been arrested over claims that they used the water-boarding torture technique on an 89-year-old woman suffering from dementia

Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed of Jonesboro, Georgia were held by police after a co-worker says that she witnessed the African-American women holding Anna Foley's face and body beneath running water to simulate drowning. According to an arrest report, the attack occurred because of an argument over ice cream at the care facility in 2008. Foley was at the facility suffering from severe dementia. Using a shower curtain and physical force against her arms and wrists, the black women sprayed water in her face in a locked shower room using a handheld nozzle, purposely obstructing her breathing, in a manner similar to waterboarding, according to the report. The act is a form of torture, as described by the United States government which causes severe physical suffering in the form of reflexive choking, gagging and the feeling of suffocation. If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering, according to Human Rights Watch.