Shock As 76-Year-Old UK Man Kills Terminally Ill Wife and Takes His Own Life Amid Caregiving Struggles

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/shock-76-year-old-uk-man-kills-terminally-ill-wife-takes-his-own-life-amid-caregiving-struggles-1763819

Posted by novagridd

15 comments

  1. And some folk actually prefer this over legalising assisted suicide. Mental.

  3. Sad thing is these things probably occur more often than we read about .

  4. Tragic. The fact they were denied a dignified passing is beyond cruel.

  5. I still don’t get why we acknowledge that it’s best to end the suffering of pets when they are dying but not people

  6. Remind me again why we should be cutting taxes and not investing in public services, like adult social care.

  7. My Partner works for a mental health crisis line, you’d be very very suprised in how many calls she receives from elderly people who are at the end of their tether and considering such things as what happened here, struggling to care for their partners who are terminally ill/have Alzheimer’s and get aggressive when sundowning etc, it’s heart breaking to know that this happens so regularly.

  8. Why shocked? Folks are being forced to take drastic action alieve suffering.

  9. Has anyone actually read the article? This to me does not seem like a championing case for voluntary euthanasia.

    He strangled her to death and inflicted head injuries. That is at odds in my mind with someone with the best intentions for their spouse. He complained of walking on eggshells around her weeks before he murdered her and of her irritability and mood swings.

    She had also previously declined neurological testing and was not diagnosed with Huntington’s whilst alive. This is not someone who would be a candidate for assisted dying even if it was legal.

    This man was burnt-out from caregiving and murdered his wife.

    I’m from Australia where AD *is* legal so I’m far from anti it but the fact that so many in the comments seem to believe that because this woman became a burden she should have died despite nowhere expressing personal desire for an assisted death is concerning to say the least.

  10. The really sad thing is that these types of cases face prosecution very rarely. The man most likely would not have faced imprisonment.

  11. Just a reality check for people, very old age eg in your mid 70’s is no picnic. Try and contemplate how you want to dictate your geriatric end if you are lucky enough to live that long, a lot earlier in life as it will reach that point much sooner than you were planning. This sounds exactly like that kind of outcome resulting in a real tragic end, but maybe silver lining was avoiding even more morbidity increase hanging on? There are no happy outcomes but there can be the avoidance of tragic ones possibly.

    Live well now, life is very short.

  12. Frankly the shocking part is the fact this doesn’t happen more often.

  13. I have a genuine fear my grandparents will do this. Won’t go into details, but my grandfather has been quite open about what he’d do. They’ve been struggling to get much-needed help for years.

    So many people find themselves in these horrible situations. This article doesn’t present a strong case for assisted dying – there’s no mention that she wanted to die. However, it does present a case that everybody deserves support. Caregiving is very challenging, especially for older people who lack the physical strength that’s often needed, and may have health issues of their own.

  14. One of my Mum’s friends waded into an icy river because he couldn’t face another round of chemo on his own. My aunt lay in constant agony in her own mess with no-one to feed her in an NHS hospital until my relatives brought her home to die. My father in law spent 50% of his last few weeks out of it on morphine and 50% in such total agony he cried deep in the night when he thought no-one could hear. My infirm elderly Mum had to sit with her equally frail semi conscious neighbour unable to move her from a crumpled state with a broken hip for many hours waiting for an ambulance. Social care budgets are stretched beyond their ability to provide decent levels of human contact or care. Psychiatric services are so rationed they might as well not exist. Repeat prescriptions of essential medicines have to be requested by the patient – which if they get forgetful or deeply depressed might not happen and nobody checks up. Why is anyone surprised?

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