DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Sherrie Morton, 46, was arrested after she left her 70-year-old mother to rot in their Auburn, Washington home. The elderly woman was found with a maggot-infested wound, stuck to her bed.

Maggots kept a 70-year-old woman alive after her daughter left her to rot with a large open wound on her leg, Washington state police say.

Sherrie Morton, 46, claimed to have been caring for her invalid mother in the Auburn, Wash., home they shared, but her definition of “care” has landed her with a felony elder-abuse charge.

Police and medics found the elderly woman stuck to her bedding with a gaping, maggot-infested sore on her leg, large piles of garbage in the home, and a strong smell of rotting flesh, feces and ammonia pervading the premises, Seattlepi.com reported. The woman said her legs were “burning.”

The scene was “like a horror movie,” a friend of Morton’s said, according to King County Sheriff’s Detective Marylisa Priebe-Olson.

Morton called 911 after the friend threatened to do so, Priebe-Olson said during a court hearing.

Morton told officials that she only discovered the maggots five hours before placing the call, and that her mother had been injured a few days prior. But paramedics said the injury was at least a month old.

The hundreds of bugs may have saved the woman’s life.

“The maggots may have helped keep [her] alive due to the fact that they were eating the rotting skin that was infected and helping to slow the infection,” Priebe-Olson said.

Morton told police she changed her 400-pound mother’s diaper and bedding and used shaving cream to clean her.

The mother said she was well cared for by Morton, Priebe-Olson told the court.

“[She] said in the hospital that her care at home was fine,” Priebe-Olson said. “However, [she] did not understand that maggots eating her flesh was not good care.”

Morton is charged with second-degree criminal mistreatment of a dependent person and remains in jail on $150,000 bail, according to Seattlepi.com.