A 95-year-old woman living at a Coney Island nursing home has been charged with murder, police said, after she allegedly beat a fellow senior resident to death over the weekend.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, the nearly century-old Galina Smirnova was initially taken to NYC Health+Hospitals/South Brooklyn to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and it was initially 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 object 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.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site amNewYork.
