According to various sources around, including this Dakota County Criminal Complaint, an elderly Burnsville woman allegedly tired of her husband’s abuse, attempted to kill him by strangling him with a telephone cord and then cracking his skull with a hammer.
From a WCCO article:
Upon arrival, police met with Ripka, who said she was tired of her husband punching and assaulting her, so she hit him with a hammer. Police noticed that her clothing and hands were covered in blood, the complaint said.
After securing Ripka, her husband appeared in the doorway, staggering and covered with blood. He had a blood soaked towel covering the right side of his head and a telephone cord wrapped tightly around his neck.
While tending to the victim, he stated that Ripka “just went nuts” at around 8 a.m. He said Ripka was certain that he had some kind of portable electronic device and that he had been on the Internet. She then allegedly began striking him repeatedly with a telephone when he tried to contact police and then tried to strangle him with the telephone cord.
The victim said he couldn’t remember if he lost consciousness during the incident, but that he remembered Ripka going into the bathroom, coming out with a toilet paper roll and wiping excrement on his face. He said she then struck him in the head with a hammer and “crushed my skull.”
The man claimed his wife has undiagnosed dementia and refuses to go to the doctor. He went on to say that her actions are likely related to her condition. While sad to hear that it has to come down to this, hopefully this incident will either get the woman the help she needs or, if she does not actually have dementia, will keep her safely separated from the abuse she alleges.
What do you think about this one? Do you believe the husband, wife, or perhaps a little of both? Are you surprised that it took until they were in their 70s for this to occur? If the woman does indeed have dementia, do you think she’ll receive the care she may need while awaiting trial? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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February 22nd, 2013 at 8:20 am
She’s awaiting trial? Is the husband pressing charges? Or do we not let spouses decide anymore when there is domestic abuse (I can’t get the article to open)?
Anyway, this will never, ever go to trial. No one wants to pay for this woman to be in jail. Even if she is of sound mind and hasn’t been abused, she will get a plea deal.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:28 am
The guy isn’t very credible. He was clearly shitfaced.
February 22nd, 2013 at 10:00 am
These folks were our neighbors 45 years ago and still live in our old neighborhood. I remember them as wonderful god fearing people and we will pray for them. The only other thing I will say is getting old sucks.
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:02 am
Cliff – that’s sad. Dementia is a truly terrible disease. It’s sometimes called “the slow goodbye”.
It’s sad that most likely the warning signs weren’t recognized earlier on so she could get the help she needed, unless it was caused by a stroke which can cause a 180* in someone’s personality. A trip to the doc for a workup would most likely be able to diagnose whether or not dementia is at play, so I hope they can get her in for that.
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:36 am
I demand that we enact stricter hammer laws.
February 22nd, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Getting old does suck and dementia is a real problem. It’s not unusually for it go to way past where it should because people are either unwilling to force treatment on a spouse or they simply can’t afford it.
There is no real solution for dementia, so all they end up doing once it gets bad is housing you away somewhere hopefully safe that costs a few grand a month to keep you until that money dries up. Then the state or fed (meaning you and me) take over footing the bill.
February 22nd, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Mikeh- a few grand a month is an understatement. My grandmother was in a memory care facility for 4 years at $6000 a month. It was a nice place, I guess, but $6000/month is outrageous. She transferred to a normal nursing home for the last two months of her life, which was like $5000/month. My grandfather paid every single month going through his entire savings until he was poor enough to have Medicaid kick in. My grandmother was on Medicaid for something like 22 days before she died.
People often complain about the cost of Medicaid and how it keeps going up, up, up. While we do have a lot more enrollees in Minnesota than we had 10 years ago, the costs of families and kids are pretty insignificant since they are on managed care and the State just pays premiums to insurance companies. A lot of those people actually have premiums they pay each month to the state based on their income. Our huge costs from the disabled and elderly, either through costs to nursing homes or for programs to keep them in their own homes (which is usually cheaper.)
February 24th, 2013 at 7:01 am
This is profoundly sad! She clearly has mental health issues. He probably has some issues too. These things usually don’t happen “out of the blue.” do they have children? Where are they? Not only do they have the underlying issues that resulted in this, they now have legal issues. Who really thinks prison will help this woman other than to keep the two away from each other? A ton of public money will now go into dealing with these two.
February 25th, 2013 at 8:33 am
Lefty, he wasn’t only shitfaced, he was hammered.
February 25th, 2013 at 8:57 am
Cost depends on your location and and level of care (note I didn’t say quality of care). It costs more for a reasonable full care facility in say Minneapolis or Burnsville than say RedWing. Much of that has to do with availability of competition in the market. We have a population of aging that need more places than we have places to go to. Many have waiting lists.
My grandmother was in a facility and the nut was $3800/month and that’s just housing. Her medication another $600/month (fairly reasonable), physical therapy another $1200/month and then miscellaneous costs. Insurance, insurance deductibles, living expenses. She had about $300k hidden around the city in various banks when she went in. By the time she passed (due to a botched surgery and after care) they were getting ready for medicare to take over. Took just under 3 years.
If you are under 25, and you are not saving money for retirement today, you’re making a big mistake. If you’re over 25 and you’re just starting. Good luck saving enough.
Oh, and if you are saving and you want to leave anything to your heirs, start talking to retirement attorneys now. Medicaid limitations on transfers and what gets counted as assets mean it is important to get your house in order way sooner than you may have thought.