Psychiatric patient accused of killing roommate at state hospital has violent history
A 51-year-old patient at Western State Hospital who was found insane by King County courts in 2014 allegedly strangled his roommate to death in their room Friday, charging documents say.
Jason Conrad Day was charged Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court with first-degree and second-degree murder in the killing of his 69-year-old roommate.
At Day’s first court date Wednesday afternoon, the defendant’s attorney from the Department of Assigned Counsel, Jared Varo, requested to waive Day’s appearance and asked that he receive a mental health competency evaluation. Commissioner Philip Thornton agreed and ordered Day to be held without bail until the evaluation was completed.
A competency hearing was set for Nov. 16.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, had been at the state psychiatric facility in Lakewood since 1989, according to Western State Hospital officials. According to court records, police were told the men had been roommates for about three months, and there were no documented problems between them.
Both men had been admitted to Western State Hospital after being found not guilty of criminal charges by reason of insanity, according to state officials, and they were in a wing of the hospital where patients living under the same circumstances are housed.
It’s unclear what led to the attack, but after the victim’s body was located, Day allegedly told a Western State Hospital security guard he assaulted his roommate because the man had threatened him.
“The guard asked the defendant how many times he punched the victim, and the defendant replied that he did not want to talk about it,” prosecutors wrote in charging documents. “Another staff member heard the defendant state something to the effect of, ‘I couldn’t take it anymore and I killed him.’”
Court records say Day was admitted on a case from 2013 in King County where he was charged with first-degree assault, and he was accused of biting the nose off of a patient at Navos, a psychiatric hospital with locations in West Seattle and Burien.
A Department of Social and Health Services spokesperson said Tuesday that the person Day is accused of killing was at Western State Hospital on a first-degree murder charge.
The defendant is also alleged to have bitten the victim in the wrist during the Friday attack, and court records allege he has a history of violent incidents at the hospital, including another nose-biting incident from August 2021. Records say he wasn’t criminally charged in that incident due to a lack of evidence and conflicting statements between Day and the other patient.
Western State Hospital has documented “several” incidents over the past few years where Day assaulted other patients, prosecutors wrote in charging documents. One involved Day biting a person’s ear and choking them, nearly to the point of unconsciousness. In another, he pushed an elderly patient and punched him in the face, records say. According to the declaration for determination of probable cause, the defendant’s most recent psychiatric evaluation stated that the assaults were due to Day’s “increased feelings of paranoia” and what day called an “anger problem.”
Lakewood Police Department officers were called to the hospital Friday for a death investigation, according to the probable cause document. Officers found the victim with injuries to his face, body and neck, and a “deep” bite wound to the wrist. Records say he appeared to have been strangled with a cord.
Western State Hospital personnel performed CPR at the scene, according to the probable cause document, but the man was declared dead at 7:26 p.m. at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Pierce County medical examiner later determined he died of strangulation.
DSHS officials told The News Tribune the attack occurred in a 15-minute window between when hospital staff makes rounds. According to the probable cause document, hospital staff first learned of the attack when Day walked up to a ward nurse and said the victim was dead.
Day walked away, and a nurse contacted security to help check on the victim, whom they found still breathing under a blanket. The nurse told police that they immediately began CPR but noticed a cord wrapped around his neck that they had trouble removing from him. The nurse and guard looked for scissors to try to cut it, but records don’t indicate whether the cord was successfully removed.
Investigators also spoke with a security guard at the hospital who reported that they checked on the victim’s room at about 6:20 p.m. and found nothing out of the ordinary, records state.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 1:19 PM.
