A so-called caretaker for a 92-year-old Oceanside woman is out of jail after, prosecutors say, he tried to murder the woman’s 93-year-old best friend.
Loved ones of both elderly women told 10News they are upset and terrified after finding out William Sutton, 66, was released from jail Tuesday night.
Someone posted his $500,000 bail.
“This has been the most horrific experience that you can imagine,” Lisa Wood, Margaret Wood’s granddaughter, said.
Sutton is seen on surveillance video throwing Margaret Wood out the door of her best friend’s Oceanside home, down three stairs, onto the cement, where she fractured her skull.
“A serious traumatic brain injury, yes, and she will succumb to this injury,” Lisa Wood said.
Sutton, a former flight attendant, was the so-called caretaker for Margaret Wood’s best friend, 92-year-old Marian Kubic.
“He was charming,” Reggie Brown, Marian Kubic’s daughter, said.
“He had hospice fooled. Hospice was coming here because of mom’s pain management,” Brown said.
Brown said Sutton was kind in front of her, so she approved of him caring for her mother.
“What I have come to realize is he proceeded to completely isolate my mother from her friends,” Brown said.
Brown thinks Sutton was using her mother.
“He did get into her finances. I’m not sure how much,” Brown said.
But Margaret Wood didn’t trust Sutton.
“Not her, nor the neighbors,” Brown said.
A neighbor told 10News that is why they pointed their surveillance camera at Kubic’s home.
It caught the violence on video.
On April 16, Wood walked a few blocks over to Kubic’s home.
“Granny came to visit her friend like she did when Will wasn’t here,” Lisa Wood said.
Sutton came home.
Margaret Wood left out the front door as Sutton came in the side door but she forgot her keys and glasses inside.
She went back inside to get them.
The elderly woman also had a broken nose, but she landed on the back of her head.
Her granddaughter thinks Sutton also punched the 93-year-old while she was inside the home.
“The door opens again, only this time it looks like she’s being pulled into the house. Just a second later she is flying backwards through the air, off three steps and lands on the back of her head on the concrete,” Lisa Wood said, describing what the video shows.
Sutton left Wood on the ground for some time.
Kubic came out and tried to help her friend, but Sutton made her go back inside, Lisa Wood said.
Wood got up, on her own, and walked down the street, where a neighbor helped her.
Sutton is seen hosing blood off the concrete.
Kubic is also now dying, traumatized because she witnessed the attempted murder of her best friend, Brown said.
“The trauma of it just wiped her out of what happened to her best friend,” Brown said.
Kubic and Wood were best friends for 30 years.
“They traveled to Australia, Hawaii,” Brown said.
Things changed with Sutton around, they said.
She has not been the same.
Wood used to walk up to four miles a day.
Now Wood is in a wheelchair-bound in a nursing home, unable to communicate as she did before, unable to care for herself.
Police arrested Sutton and he is charged with attempted murder and elder abuse.
“It was shocking when we learned this morning that he had gotten out of jail last night,” Lisa Wood told 10News Wednesday evening.
Someone posted his $500,000 bail
“The whole neighborhood is terrified,” Lisa Wood said.
Wednesday, Kubic was moved to the same nursing home where Margaret Wood is.
The best friends will be sharing a room, spending their final days together.
“Watch out for your parents, your grandparents. Don’t let this happen to anybody else,” Lisa Wood said.
Sutton is due back in court on May 26.
