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An investigation is under way after a violent murder at an assisted living home. Police say one patient beat another and they can't explain why the patient suddenly went on the attack. The 70-year-old stroke victim's family wants answers.
“He loved fishing, hunting and he loved his family,” the victim’s grandson Tanner Simmons said.
Roland "Claude" Simmons suffered a stroke years ago and was a patient at Walden Care Assisted Living in Hickory.
“He’s a good grandpa, and everybody sure does miss him and love him,” Tanner Simmons said.
He was supposed to visit his grandfather Thursday. Instead, his family is mourning.
“My dad, he’s devastated right now,” he said.
Police say another patient at Walden Care, 43-year-old Dennis Scherzer, hit Simmons in the head with something like a stick, repeatedly. Workers saw the end of the assault and called 9-1-1.
“I looked outside and all of a sudden he was beating something, beating, to see what he was beating on. I looked out the window, and there's another resident lying on the ground and he was beating him in the head,” the caller said to the 911 operator.
Scherzer ran, but not far. Police arrested him , but say they have no idea what prompted the attack. The two patients weren't roommates and by all accounts barely knew each other.
Simmons’ wife says she can’t imagine something like this happening at the facility.
Bonnie Simmons told us, “It just blows my mind right now, what happened.” But she and her grandson both wonder if workers might have been able to save Roland Simmons.
“If they had security cameras and someone was watching them, they could have stopped it and helped my grandpa,” Simmons said.
We don’t know if there are in fact cameras at the 60 bed facility. The director would only tell us that the incident is under internal investigation.
We did some digging and found the state fined Walden Care in 2007. That was after two patients got out and wandered across a four lane highway. We checked their most recent inspection, and found they scored as high as possible.
