Trussed Mental Patients Die In Hospital Fire

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23217, 31 March 1950, Page 5

Trussed Mental Patients Die In Hospital Fire

(N.Z.P.A.—Reuter— Copyright.) (10 a.m.) NEW YORK, March 29 Nine men mental patients, five of them strapped to their beds, died in a fire in a private sanatorium in Springfield tonight.

Heroic attendants freed many violent mental patients, leading them to safety where they were tied up with blankets to prevent them from attacking the firemen fighting the blaze.

All the dead were suffocated but firemen said that five violent patients, who died chained in their cells, had battered themselves against the concrete walls in terror. About 30 persons were overcome by smoke. The firemen had cut through wire-mesh barriers over the windows to help attendants with hysterical patients. Screaming patients fought with their rescuers. Some of them even tried to run towards the heart of the fire. , The sanatorium housed 90 senile and mental patients. , , , A patient admitted today he started the fire. The nolice said that Nicholas Verna, a 26 year-old ex-serviceman admitted setting a fire in the basement of the institution. They said Verna had once been imprisoned for arson. Eighty other persons were hurt including the firemen, nurses and patients. Many of the patients were mental cases.