Care worker elbowed pensioner in throat
A nursing home care assistant was facing jail today after being convicted of ill treating three patients.
Neil Prince was bailed for a pre-sentence report after being found guilty by the jury but was told by Judge Stephen Eyre QC: "It is almost inevitable that there will be a custodial sentence."
The 42-year-old repeatedly elbowed an ex-boxer, aged 70 with severe dementia, in the throat at the Coach House Nursing Home in Goldthorn Hill that looks after people with mental issues.
Care assistant Jamie Lee-Hall, working alongside the defendant at the time, told Wolverhampton Crown Court: "Neil put his knee across the chest or stomach of the man who was sitting down, held his arms and hit him with his elbow several times.
"Neil got off him and shouted 'if you ever f***ing lay a hand on me again you will get worse'. I was so shocked I did not know what to say or do."
Trouble started when Prince knocked a half eaten sandwich out of the hand of the victim who then inadvertently struck him in the face while trying to hang on to the food. The flare up on June 24 last year came 10 days after Prince frogmarched two other residents with dementia down a corridor and pushed them into chairs after becoming irritated by them.
One was in his 70s and the other his 60s.
Nursing home bosses did not know of this incident until after the other had occurred. Police were called in an after an internal investigation.
Prince, from Masefield Road, Low Hill, had pleaded not guilty to the three charges of ill treating a person without mental capacity. He will be sentenced on October 20.
