Man held over gruesome attack on elderly patient

Rome, Aug 10 (IANS/AKI) Police in Italy's southern port city of Taranto on Thursday arrested a 42-year-old man accused of attacking an elderly woman in a hospital ward, fracturing her skull and causing a brain haemorrhage.

The woman, 73-year-old Adriana Dursi, is in a coma the Taranto's Santissima Annunziata hospital's intensive care unit after she was struck her on the back of the head with a blunt object on Wednesday.

Police said they identified the man from video security camera images after the attack on Dursi, an Alzheimer's disease sufferer, which took place after she was admitted to the hospital's observation ward on Wednesday.

Local newspaper La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno named Dursi's suspected attacker as Giovanni Maggio.

Maggio came to the Santissima Annunziata's emergency room on Wednesday but refused to be examined and doctors there said they noted he was in a disturbed mental state, the daily reported.

He allegedly attacked Dursi while her son had briefly left the observation ward. Dursi's son said he immediately noticed blood trickling from the back of his mother's head when he returned to the ward and alerted staff.

--IANS/AKI

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