A nursing home resident admitted to choking a 77-year-old woman to death because she lay down on his bed next to him.
Cliff Mody, 72, allegedly told staff at the Gold Choice Assisted Living & Memory Care nursing home in Palm Coast, Florida, that he had beaten his fellow resident. Workers called 911 around 2am on Wednesday.
‘I walked in and he had blood on his hands and she has a busted lip,’ a nursing home employee told the 911 dispatcher. ‘I could look at her and soon as I walked in and knew she was expired and I felt for a pulse and there’s no pulse.’
Arriving deputies found the victim not breathing and unconscious, and pronounced her dead at the scene.
She died of manual strangulation, an autopsy found.
Mody told deputies that he the woman because he was angry that she entered his room and lay down next to him on his bed, according to a charging affidavit obtained by the .
The suspect said he told her to leave but she did not, ‘so he decided to strike her in the head multiple times with an open hand’, a deputy said in the affidavit.
Mody claimed that the woman bit his arm, but he did not have injuries reflecting his statement, the deputy wrote.
‘Cliff advised that he then put (the victim) in a choke hold and that he put as much pressure as he could, later admitting to knowing that this action would restrict her airway and possibly kill her,’ the affidavit states.
‘When asked why Cliff chose to take such violent action, he responded by advising that he was “mad.”’
The woman had a ‘diminished mental capacity’ that caused her to enter the rooms of other residents and try to lie in bed with them, according to officials.
Mody, who has a history of attacking others, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and charged with second-degree murder, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
He made his first court appearance on Thursday and has been put in jail without bond. His arraignment is set for June 13.
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