Wife tries to suffocate husband with a pillow as he laid in hospital bed, TN cops say
A woman tried using a pillow to kill her husband in a Tennessee hospital room, officials say.
The man was a patient at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville when his wife, Barbara Louise Jones, stopped by for a visit on Saturday, her Davidson County arrest affidavit says.
He said he could hear Jones drinking and thought the room smelled like alcohol, according to the court document.
Later, someone in the hospital heard screaming and saw Jones “taking a pillow off of her husband’s face,” officials say.
The husband said: “She tried smothering me to death,” according to Davidson County records.
He told an officer that his wife was “completely on top of him in the hospital bed using all of her body weight,” police say.
The husband’s medical condition kept him from pushing her away, and Jones knocked away a button that would have allowed him to reach a nurse, officials say.
“Through our visitation policy we try to allow our patients and their visitors as much privacy as possible while maintaining a safe environment where care is uninterrupted,” hospital spokesman John Howser said in a statement to WKRN. “Thanks to an alert staff member there was an appropriate intervention in this matter.”
Jones was arrested Sunday and charged with attempted criminal homicide, Davidson County records show.
She was being held Monday on a $50,000 bond, according to the records.
