Personal Injury Law

Maryland Mental Hospital Patient Charged with Murder of Fellow Patient

By Jack Lebowitz, Esq. and Vadim Mzhen, Esq.

Maryland State Police have charged El Soudani El-Wahhabi, also called Saladin Taylor, with first- and second-degree murder. El-Wahhabi, who is a patient at the at the Clifton T. Perkins mental hospital, is accused of killing Susan Sachs, who was also a resident at the Jessup facility.

According to the Washington Post, Sachs? dead body was discovered on Sunday morning by her roommate. There was string around the 45-year-old woman?s neck. State investigators later arrested El-Wahhabi, who authorities say admitted to strangling and kissing Sachs.

Sachs had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. She and El-Wahhabi lived in separate rooms in the same hallway in a medium-security wing of the hospital.

This is not the first violent crime allegedly involving El-Wahhabi. In 1993, El-Wahhabi was released on parole after serving time for assaulting a patient during an earlier stay at the Jessup mental hospital. He was charged in 1995 with the murder of Mona Johnson. Part of his tongue was discovered at the crime scene. According to the Baltimore Sun, a judge found him unfit to stand trial on sexual assault charges involving his sister-in-law as the alleged victim.

Maryland nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities where patients reside are responsible for protecting them from nursing abuse, nursing neglect, and violent assailants. This means hiring qualified workers that don?t have a criminal background and also making sure that if there are potentially dangerous residents staying at the facility, that steps are taken to protect the other patients from becoming the victims of sexual assault, assault and battery, rape, molestation, or murder. Failure to protect patients from violent crimes can be grounds for a lawsuit seeking damages for Maryland personal injury or wrongful death.

If you or someone you love was injured or killed while staying at a Maryland nursing home or hospital, contact our Baltimore nursing home abuse and negligence law firm today.

State mental hospital patient accused of killing another patient, The Baltimore Sun, September 27, 2010

Patient at Maryland mental hospital was strangled, police say, The Washington Post, September 27, 2010

Related Web Resources:
Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, US News & World Report

Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Maryland Nursing Home Lawyer Blog

Full post as published by Maryland Accident Law Blog on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).