A 95-year-old nursing home resident was charged with beating her 89-year-old roommate, a Holocaust survivor, to death in Brooklyn, New York, this week, authorities announced Wednesday.
A witness saw Galina Smirnova, covered in blood, washing her hands in their blood-soaked room at Seagate Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Coney Island at 9:55 p.m. An hour earlier, staff had entered their room and saw the victim alive, sleeping in her bed, according to the criminal complaint, seen by local US outlets.
The victim, Nina Kravtsov, was lying on her bed, unresponsive and covered in blood, when first responders arrived at the scene at 10:30 p.m. Sunday evening.
She was taken to NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, where she died on Monday morning as a result of blunt force trauma. Kravtsov sustained facial, head, and skull fractures.
Smirnova was arrested on Tuesday, arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Wednesday, and pleaded not guilty to the charges. She is due back in court on Tuesday. She was ordered to be held in court without bail.
Nina Kravtsov
Kravtsov was from a small Ukrainian town. She was forced into a ghetto with several other family members when her town was invaded. After surviving the genocide, she married at 18, had a daughter, and worked as a nurse. She was widowed at 19 and raised her daughter as a single mother.
In 1979, she and her daughter moved to "Little Ukraine" in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. She survived a stroke in 2020 and then moved to the nursing home.
The assailant was a dementia patient who also spoke Russian.