Woodhull Hospital
For lack of a better term, we’ll call this Schrödinger’s homicide case. An 86-year-old woman died less than four hours after a 32-year-old female suspect hit her in the head for not social distancing, said police sources cited by The New York Daily News. The question right now: Is this death the suspect’s fault? The autopsy results for victim Janie Marshall are pending, authorities reportedly said. Depending on the details, the much-younger Cassandra Lundy could be in even more trouble than before.
Ostensibly, social distancing guidelines are intended to protect people like Marshall from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19): She was well over 65. On top of that, she was reportedly at the Woodhull Hospital in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant for a bowel obstruction, police sources reportedly said. That’s where authorities claim she crossed paths with Lundy. The suspect was at the facility for seizures, officials said.
According to authorities, she got mad that Marshall wasn’t social distancing, and so she hit her in the head. This knocked the victim to the ground, cops said. There were no witnesses, but it was allegedly caught on tape.
Right now, her criminal case is comparatively mild. Lundy was reportedly just issued a summons for disorderly conduct by the New York Police Department, then released by Hospital cops. But Marshall died right before 5:40 p.m. on Saturday, according to the outlet.
It’s unclear if Lundy has an attorney in the current charge.
To be sure, there’s a lot of anxiety right now about COVID-19. Some people, including Lundy, have been accused going over the top, getting violent in their social distancing. Others allegedly engaged in illegally gross behavior because they didn’t take it seriously at all.
[Screengrab via CBS New York archive footage]