A patient, two psychiatric assistants and a nurse have been charged with fatally beating another patient at a state mental health facility in Ohio.
A 24-year-old man has been charged with murder and serious assault after allegedly attacking a 57-year-old victim at Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare in Columbus on July 23, 2022, the Columbus Dispatch reported Friday.
At the time, the assault suspect was being evaluated by the facility's forensic psychologists to determine whether he was competent to stand trial in a sexual assault case, according to county court records.
The victim had been in the facility for about a month after being found incompetent in a 2022 case in which he was charged with murder in the September 2021 death of a woman, Cuyahoga County court records show.
The facility is where courts across Ohio send people accused of crimes for forensic psychological evaluations. It also houses patients with severe mental health needs referred from other mental and behavioral health facilities.
Details of the attack and what prompted it have not been disclosed. An autopsy conducted by the Franklin County Coroner's Office determined that the victim died from blunt force trauma to the head.
John Traylor, 65, and Augustine Norris, 66, worked as psychiatric assistants at the facility until they retired last spring, while Julie Willoughby, 40, a former nurse, worked as a psychiatric assistant at the facility until she retired last spring. ) are each charged with manslaughter and patient abuse or neglect. Court records.
All four were indicted by a county grand jury, and the charges were made public Friday. Court records do not show that any of the four have hired attorneys, nor do they list their attorneys' phone numbers.
