Unbeknown to him, his mother’s violent slaying at the hands of an intruder would be the first of three at old age homes which lie adjacent to one another in the Pietermaritzburg city centre. After the detectives had left and the crime scene tape was lifted, Tim O’Connor lingered in his 92-year-old mother Patricia’s room.
“I spent some time with her in her room,” he said, recounting the moments before her body was taken away.
The meek and frail woman – unable to even walk on her own – had been strangled during a brutal robbery in her room at the Kenwyn home on Pietermaritz Street on July 21.
Days later, in the Jacaranda Lodge next door, 89-year-old Roland Heathcote was stabbed to death and, this week, 89-year-old Patricia Tugwell had her throat slit with scissors after a man had forced his way into her room.
“Age does not confer dignity and those who know you, watch you crumble, and all you want is some peace and quiet to see out your twilight years. She knew that and she was on top of that situation. Her health wasn’t good and she accepted what was coming, just not in the manner that it came,” he lamented.
Source: Times Live
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