FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Hospital Patient Convicted of Fatally Beating another Patient
Victim Attacked in Shower, Died of Blunt Force Trauma, Strangulation
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson today announced that a 23-year-old man who was in a psychiatric facility has been convicted of murder for attacking a fellow patient in the shower, beating him to death and strangling him with a towel.
District Attorney Thompson said, “This defendant, who brutally beat and strangled to death a fellow patient, will now spend many years in prison for his sadistic acts.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Spence Andrews, 23, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn. He was today convicted of one count of second-degree murder following a jury trial before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Miriam Cyrulnik. The defendant will be sentenced on July 12, 2016 at which time he faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
The District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, on March 19, 2013 at about 9:00 p.m., at St. John’s Interfaith Hospital, located at 1545 Atlantic Avenue, the defendant repeatedly struck Conrad Delimar, 47, about the face, while the victim was taking a shower. The defendant then climbed on top of Delimar while he was on the floor and continued to strike him about the head and face numerous times with closed fists. He then tied a towel around the victim’s neck.
A day earlier, the defendant’s grandmother called 911 after he returned home and was behaving erratically, according to trial testimony. He was then taken by ambulance to the hospital and admitted for psychiatric evaluation.
The next day a nurse observed him standing by a pay phone while soaking wet, as though he had just emerged from the shower. The defendant alleged that the victim groped him in the shower, according to trial testimony. A nurse went to investigate and found the victim in a pool of his own blood, unresponsive, on the bathroom floor. He had been severely beaten and had a towel tied around his neck. The cause of death was blunt force trauma causing a fractured skull and strangulation.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Howard Jackson of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Iris Das, of the District Attorney’s Violent Criminal Enterprise Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Taub, Chief of the Homicide Bureau.
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