Family pleads for more staff after elderly mom dies in attack at senior’s home

KAMLOOPS, B.C. – For the third time in the past two years, the B.C. Coroners Service has declared a death at an Interior senior’s facility is a homicide.

Eighty-four-year-old Emily Houston died on July 15th, 10 days after she was attacked by a fellow resident of Kamloops Seniors Village.

Kamloops RCMP investigated, but decided against recommending charges.

Houston’s daughter, Nancy Bradley, says the woman who hit her mother in the chest and pushed her into a metal door frame was suffering from dementia and simply wanted to return to her former room, which had been given to Bradley’s mother.

Bradley is calling on senior’s facilities across B.C. to increase staffing to prevent similar incidents.

Eighty-five-year-old Bill May died in 2013 after he was assaulted by his roommate at a Vernon residential care facility and just two months earlier an attack by a resident at the Overlander Extended Care in Kamloops killed 79-year-old Jack Shippobotham. (CFJC)