Woman watches friend beaten; Police turn their backs
Three women were enjoying an evening chat on Monday night on Eve Street when suddenly the son of one of them burst down the door and in a violent frenzy attacked his mother’s companions. Elizabeth Rudon is still in critical condition at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, but Ilma McCann tells News Five a harrowing tale of the brutal assault. The incident is horrifying on its own, but so is the reaction of the police. McCann and her neighbors say the police saw Rudon lying in a pool of blood and simply left her there.
Ilma McCann
“He came and Betty was sitting here then. I sat there. He grabbed her and started to hit her and he threw her down on the floor. And he rolled her and beat her up there and kept hitting her head and pushing down on the floor harder. Then he started to throw things at her and that’s when he saw the lamp. And he took the lamp and he threw it at her and that hit her on the head. She was lying this way and he got her straight her and that is what has caused a fractured skull.”
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
For 83 year old Ilma McCann, what had been a pleasant evening in her home suddenly turned into a nightmare. McCann has had Noreen Jackson living with her for the past three years. Her son, of 30 years Levi Jackson was in the habit of visiting his mother every evening after work. For the past week, Noreen Jackson had been suffering from high blood pressure and 57 year old Elizabeth “Betty” Rudon had come nightly to check on her. But around 6:30 on Monday night, when Jackson came to the house, he didn’t knock as usual and he wasn’t acting like the quiet mild mannered man McCann knew him to be. Instead, she says he broke down the door and entered the house in a rage.
Ilma McCann
“I got up to meet him and he grabbed me and he threw me on the floor and bounce me around and tried to hurt me as much as he could, which he did. I was bruised all over my body and my knee, this knee especially. And then he threw me again on the floor and I tried to get away. And his mother shouted at him and told him to leave me alone and he walked off.”
Relief was short lived. About ten minutes later, Jackson came back into the house.
Ilma McCann
“He grabbed his mother and he walked off with her. He picked her up in his arms and took her. Then he took her to some…I don’t know if it’s my yard her or somebody’s yard but he plunked her down in some grass and he left her there. He didn’t hurt the mother.”
It was then that Jackson began to savagely beat Betty Rudon with anything in sight. When he saw a kerosene lamp, just like this one, he hit her with it so hard he fractured her skull. And just when you think this story can’t get worse, it does. Ilma McCann says the police arrived, but they saw Rudon’s bloody body on the floor but did nothing.
Ilma McCann
“I had already called the police, from the beginning. I went into the bedroom; I have a phone next to my bed. And I asked them, I say listen, I need a police, please get one. There’s a crazy man in my house attacking us. Please come right away. They didn’t stay long, they were here quickly. It was a Spanish one and a Creole and they came and I said, come right in.”
“They came in and they saw all the blood and they saw the girl all washed in blood. They did nothing. They went.”
Janelle Chanona
“How did make you feel?”
Ilma McCann
“I felt terrible. I said, we have to get this girl help before she bleeds to death.”
“All this was blood, she bled profusely cause she must have bled from different parts of her body.”
Fortunately for Rudon, a next door neighbor came home a few minutes after the police left and rushed her to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Rudon remains in critical condition in a semi-conscious state with severe trauma to her skull and face and injury to her brain. Hospital officials say the next few days are critical as her condition might improve but might also deteriorate.
Ilma McCann
“the only thing I would like to know is that Betty would get better.”
Janelle Chanona
“Do you feel safe in your house?
Ilma McCann
“I feel safe now that they have him locked up.”
Hospital staff told the victim’s family that 30 year old Levi Jackson came to the hospital that evening looking for his mother and despite numerous calls to police, they did not respond and he fled. Since then police have detained Jackson but have not filed any charges. As for the two police officers, who allegedly abandoned Rudon at the house on Eve Street, Police Public Relations Officer Christy Castillo, says Internal Affairs is investigating their behaviour.
