A 68-year-old woman is in critical condition after her own husband attempted to murder her inside their home in Athens early Sunday afternoon. The 74-year-old man, believing he had killed his wife, climbed to the roof of an apartment building and jumped to his death. According to all indications so far, the cause of the attempted murder was the health problems the 68-year-old was facing, which her would-be killer and subsequent suicide victim could no longer manage.
Athens: Frequent arguments between the couple – The 74-year-old struggled with his wife’s dementia, timeline of the tragedy
“I can’t take this situation anymore,” the 74-year-old man wrote among other things in his suicide note addressed to their son. He was trying to explain that he could no longer cope with his wife’s dementia issues that had persisted for years. The 68-year-old woman frequently argued with her 74-year-old husband, as she would forget things or say words that enraged the elderly man. For all these years, the 74-year-old fought alone to help her. The existence of the note cannot confirm whether the 74-year-old had made the decision beforehand, meaning whether he had premeditated the attack on his wife or if it happened in the heat of the moment. Moreover, as neighbors of the couple reported to police – who lived in a ground-floor apartment on Lokridon Street in Athens – shortly before the attempted murder of the 68-year-old, voices and intense arguing were heard. “It wasn’t anything strange, such arguments happened frequently,” residents told police, as the 74-year-old tried to control the 68-year-old who, due to her health condition, didn’t understand whether she was doing something right or wrong.
Using a knife, the perpetrator wounded the 68-year-old in the neck. He then climbed to the roof of their apartment building, crossed to the roof of the adjacent building that touches theirs, and subsequently jumped to his death. The weapon from the bloody attack was found and transferred to criminology laboratories. The family’s son and other relatives, who are in shock, now hope for a miracle and that the 68-year-old woman will survive, for whom doctors are fighting a titanic battle to keep her alive.
