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Police hold man who shot his elderly wife

Healthcare Security Weekly, December 10, 2007

Police in Italy are holding a 77-year-old man who allegedly killed his elderly wife, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease while she lay in her hospital bed.

The man, a retired traffic warden, walked into the geriatrics ward at a hospital in the town of Prato, in Tuscany, where his 82-year-old wife was being cared for, police told CNN. In front of five other patients, the man took out a gun and shot his wife twice in the head and once in the chest, police said.

Security staff at the hospital were alerted by the sound of gun shots and when they arrived on the ward found the man waiting on a seat next to his wife. Following the shooting, he called police to tell them what he had done, CNN reported. Police said the man told them he carried out the shooting because he could no longer bear to see his wife, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, suffer. The wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's eight years ago and was admitted to the hospital five days before the shooting.

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