The distraught family of a man who was allegedly murdered in a psychiatric ward at a New York hospital says they want answers to how this tragedy could have happened.
Conrad Delimar, 47, of Brooklyn, was beaten to death behind the locked doors of a shower room at Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening, police sources said.
Spence Andrews, 20, also an inpatient, has been charged with second-degree murder.
“I feel as if it was negligence on the part of the institution,” said Delimar’s half-brother, Alphonso Oliver, 36, in an exclusive interview with theGrio.
“My understanding is that there was an argument, they should have been separated. If they were fully staffed there is no way in the world they wouldn’t have heard a tussle of something.”
“We are planning to take legal action and are looking into hiring an attorney,” adds Oliver. “This won’t be swept under the carpet.”
Oliver said his brother, who suffered from “full-body seizures” since he was a child, was someone who always put a smile on people’s faces. “My brother is loved and is now sadly missed.”
Sources say the two patients were playing a game of dominoes in the activity room that evening. Though there are conflicting accounts of the relationship between the two men, with some suggesting there may have been an altercation earlier in the day.
Melissa M. Krantz, a spokeswoman for the hospital, told theGrio that there are no surveillance cameras in the showers for privacy and the hospital is expected to launch an internal investigation.
Officers were called out to the hospital at 9:54 pm, said the NYPD. They discovered Delimar unconscious and unresponsive with injuries to his upper body and head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Andrews was taken into police custody and moved to Kings County hospital.
It is unclear how a second man was able to enter and leave a shower because the hospital’s policy allows only one patient to shower at a time, according to a report in the New York Times. In the Times report, Krantz said a staff member situated outside the eight-floor shower room “did not hear anything at all.”
Renee Dorn, the younger sister of Delimar, said the family only found out through the media. “They didn’t call none of us,” she said. “A friend of my uncle’s called to say he saw the story in the paper. When we called the hospital they wouldn’t tell us anything.”
Krantz said, “the NYC police department indicated that they would contact the family.” On Thursday officials said they had made contact with Delimar’s next-of-kin.
Ron Honberg of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said it is important to ask whether there was adequate staffing or a history of previous conflict between the two men.
“There are a lot of legitimate questions that need to be asked,” he said. “In cases like these, there needs to be an external investigation.”
“One of the things I worry about situations like this is that it reinforces perceptions that mental illness equates to violence,” he adds. “A great majority of mentally ill are not violent.”
The Brooklyn-based hospital, which serves low-income populations in Bedford-Stuyvesant and surrounding areas, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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