A 95-year-old woman stands charged with murder after allegedly killing a fellow resident at a New York City nursing home Sunday night.
Galina Smirnova, wielding a metal piece of her wheelchair, reportedly assailed an elderly woman at the Seagate Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn, according to WPIX-TV in New York.
The women were reportedly arguing just before Smirnova attacked.
When police arrived, they found 89-year-old Nina Kravtsov suffering from head trauma.
She died at the hospital early Monday morning.
Kravtsov was a Holocaust survivor from Ukraine, according to the New York Post.
“I was devastated,” her daughter Lucy Flom told the New York Post. “My friends are saying they can’t believe it because it only happens in movies.
“Right now I’m grieving … the circumstances of how [my mother] died. I said, OK, they took her to the hospital. They are going to stabilize her. She was in the trauma unit. I didn’t expect this outcome, that she’d die,” Flom said.
Should this suspect’s dementia diagnosis be taken into account by the court?
Smirnova, who reportedly has dementia, was taken into custody.
Later, police announced that she was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Below is a photo of Kravtsov, the woman she allegedly murdered.
95-year-old dementia patient arrested, charged with murder for beating fellow NYC nursing home patient to death https://t.co/FXxKiQQ9yc pic.twitter.com/BuXaUJVBiA
— New York Post Metro (@nypmetro) September 17, 2025
Flom said her mother survived the Holocaust when she was just a girl.
“She was 5 years old when she was in the ghetto,” she told the Post. “She had a big family. She lost most of her family.”
⚠️ WARNING: This post contains graphic descriptions of a fatal assault.
A 95-year-old woman with dementia allegedly beat her 89-year-old fellow nursing home resident to death with a metal piece from a wheelchair, according to police sources.
The fatal clash occurred late Sunday… pic.twitter.com/xXpOT7Iu15
— True Crime Updates (@TrueCrimeUpdat) September 15, 2025
Kravtsov moved to the nursing home about five years ago, after her husband died, according to the Post.
Friends and neighbors adored her.
“She’d sit by the window and we’d say, ‘Aunt Nina,’” said a former neighbor of Kravtsov who identified herself only as Katya. “Everybody called her Aunt Nina. She’d wave. We’d ask how she was doing. We were hoping that she’d come back.”
As for Kravtsov’s accused attacker, she has since checked in to the Coney Island Hospital, where she’s undergoing a physical and psychiatric evaluation.
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