93-Year-Old Woman Beaten To Death By Fellow Nursing Home Resident With Mental Illness

A mentally ill man used his walking stick to fatally beat a 93-year-old woman in a U.K. care facility at the start of the year — less than two weeks after he had moved in next to her.

Alexander Rawson, 63, attacked Eileen Dean in her bedroom at the Fieldside care home in south London's Catford area on Jan. 3, The Evening Standard reported. She had been self-isolating in the room as she recovered from COVID-19.

Rawson was charged with murder but was deemed unfit to stand trial and did not appear in court. He was found by a jury to have attacked and killed her.

The jury in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales heard during a trial how Rawson repeatedly beat Dean with a metal walking stick, causing severe injuries to her face, head and upper body.

Surveillance footage from that night showed that Rawson had walked in the direction of Dean's bedroom holding a metal walking stick hours before she was found injured, a report by My London said.

"I think somebody has been killed and I don't know what happening," Rawson told an operator during a call to 999 — the U.K.'s emergency hotline.

A Fieldside staff member later checked on Rawson in the facility's second-floor hallway after she spotted him on security cameras.

Rawson then pointed at Dean's room and said, "She is dead," according to the BBC.

Dean, however, was reportedly still alive at that point and appeared to have mouthed the word "help." Rawson's walking stick was also found on Dean's bed with the handle close to the back of her head.

The attack left Dean, who suffered from dementia, with multiple fractures to her facial bones and traumatic brain injury. She later died in a hospital.

Detective chief inspector Chris Wood, the lead investigator of the case, said Dean was known as a "calm, quiet and lovely woman.”

"Eileen was a completely defenseless woman, whose life was suddenly taken away in a horrific manner," Wood said.

Rawson, who was previously diagnosed with mental confusion, amnesia and disorientation, later told police he "was on a mission or the world would die" and that he "did what [he] had to do."

He moved in next to Dean's room on Dec. 22, 2020, after being detained under the Mental Health Act and being an in-patient at two south London hospitals since July last year.

Rawson reportedly threatened hospital staff with a butter knife and a pair of scissors on two separate occasions, among other acts of aggression, but he claimed he could not recollect these incidents.

Additionally, he told a doctor that he had been attacked by people from outer space and that he would get a machine gun and kill them.

Rawson is now scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 20.

The Care Quality Commission, which oversees care homes, carried out a new inspection of Fieldside in the weeks following Dean's death. It found that the facility's safety and leadership — both of which were previously rated good — needed improvement.