Hospital staff find signs Blue Springs woman with dementia may have been strangled
Police are investigating a suspected domestic assault after hospital staff found signs that a Blue Springs woman with dementia might have been strangled, court records show.
Officers with the Blue Springs Police Department responded about 3 a.m. July 5 to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs after hospital staff reported they had a 53-year-old patient they believed had been strangled, according to an affidavit filed for a search warrant in Jackson County Circuit Court.
A doctor told police that the patient’s husband had called the Central Jackson County Fire Protection District saying his wife was having a possible stroke. The woman has dementia and her husband was her only caretaker, according to the search warrant application.
The husband said he had been feeding his wife when she started to “jolt” her body, the doctor told police. The husband gave her four or five spoons of fruit and then called 911.
While at the hospital, medical staff did a CT scan which revealed “constrictive trauma to the neck.” The doctor told police she also had a bruise to the left side of her neck, according to the court document.
The patient was non-verbal and was intubated and sedated, the doctor said. She was also on a ventilator and at the time of the application for the search warrant it was unknown if she would recover.
A paramedic told police that the wife and husband were the only people in the apartment when they responded to the possible stroke. The wife was slumped over on the couch and was not responding to pain, the paramedic said.
Police requested the search warrant of the couple’s apartment in the 800 block of N.E. Sunnyside School Road in Blue Springs so that they could get photographs and video of the inside of the apartment.
This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 7:39 AM.
