News: Long Island Man Kills Elderly Mother
(Long Island, N.Y.) A sixty-nine-year-old Brentwood man was charged with killing his ninety-eight-year-old mother. He claimed to have been suffering from illnesses that led him to believe he was going to die. His defense attorneys said that he was distraught over the thought of leaving his mother alone.
Reports stated that the man attempted suicide after killing his mother and pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder at his arraignment in Bay Shore. Police and authorities on the case claimed that he suffocated the ninety-eight-year-old with a plastic bag in the studio apartment they lived in. It’s uncertain whether he was the woman’s sole caretaker.
According to sources, the elderly woman was bedridden and the man’s defense claimed that he adored her. Reports stated that he had been suffering from skin cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. It’s uncertain what the exact condition of his health was at the time of the incident.
A similar case occurred in Garden City a few months ago when a fifty-six-year-old man was charged with killing his mother. Police came to his College Place residence last April after he called 911 and spoke with a dispatcher. He had allegedly asked for police assistance, sending two officers to the scene shortly after.
The officers came to the two-story brick home at roughly eight that night and discovered that the man’s eighty-eight-year-old mother had already been killed. She shared a home with her son and had allegedly become ill in recent years. According to reports, her son was responsible for her care and no nurses were ever seen entering the home.
The fifty-six-year-old was unemployed and had been spending his mother’s funds without her consent. The shame of emptying her savings caused him to take her life by strangling her with a scarf-like article of clothing. After killing her, he attempted to take his own life in a botched suicide attempt.
Police claimed that the woman had been dead for hours when they entered the home and that they had discovered the man bleeding at the scene. The Medical Examiner performed an autopsy to determine the time of death, and the man was charged with murder in the second degree. He was taken to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow for his injuries and represented by a Legal Aid attorney.
Reports stated that there wasn’t evidence that the woman had any knowledge of her son’s financial situation at the time of the incident. Nonetheless, the fifty-six-year-old proceeded to take her life and slit his wrists, ashamed of the amount of money he had spent. Sources claimed that the man had two prior drunk driving incidents in 1998 and 2005. Some guessed that the stresses of being a sick and elderly woman’s only caretaker was what pushed him over the edge.
