A 95-year-old woman living at a Brooklyn care facility has been charged with murder, police said after she allegedly beat a fellow senior resident to death over the weekend while the victim’s family say they are laying blame on the hands of the facility.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, the nearly century-old Galina Smirnova was initially taken to Coney Island Hospital to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and it was unclear if she was going to be charged criminally due to reportedly suffering from dementia.
However, cops said Tuesday that Smirnova had been officially booked on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon for the killing of 89-year-old Nina Kravtsov.
Police sources report that Kravtsov was found lying in a bed inside the Seagate Rehab Nursing Home located at 3015 West 29th St. in Coney Island just before 10:30 p.m. on Sunday. She had suffered head trauma.
Cops say Smirnova had allegedly become enraged and used a metal leg taken from a wheelchair and beat Kravtsov with it.
EMS rushed the victim to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where she was pronounced dead during the early hours of Monday.
Kravtsov’s daughter told the New York Post that her mother was a Holocaust survivor, adding that she has been left in shock by the incident.
“My friends are saying they can’t believe it because it only happens in movies,” Lucy Flom said, according to the Post.
Meanwhile the family attorney, Randy Zelin, told amNewYork that Smirnova was a new patient to the nursing home and said the two women should not have been left alone together.
“You gotta be kidding me, you don’t leave a dementia patient alone in a new place, in new surroundings. You don’t leave that person alone, let alone do you leave that person alone with an 89-year-old resident who could not possibly defend herself against some unprovoked, unanticipated, unannounced fit of rage, which is something that happens with dementia,” Zelin said, adding that the attack unfolded unprovoked. “This is an 89 year old mother, a Holocaust survivor, who had absolutely no history in the years that she lived there of being anything other than what you would expect your mother, your grandmother to be.”
Zelin added that the family has been left traumatized and says he will be taking legal action against Seagate Rehab Nursing Home, comparing the incident to that of a horror movie.
“Your mother ends up beaten to death by the leg of a wheelchair. That is not something you could script in a horror movie, or maybe you could, but that’s where it belongs,” Zelin said.
