E-Edition
Get the latest news delivered daily!
E-Edition
Trending:
Margaret Wood was funny, her family said. She was feisty. And she was independent.
In 2016, at 93 years old, Wood lived by herself. She still drove, and she took walks that sometimes stretched three or four miles. She fiercely loved her friends, who called her “Marge,” and her family, who called her “Granny.” And they loved her.
“The Wood family has suffered a great loss with the murder of my mother,” Richard Wood, Jr. told a Vista judge Monday. “She was the center of our family, a true matriarch.”
The great-grandmother died less than two months after her friend’s caregiver pushed her out of a door and onto a concrete patio on April 16, 2016.
Video of the incident shows her falling backwards out of the door with such force, it appears she was lifted off her feet as she flew down three small steps. When she landed, her head smacked concrete.
Wood suffered serious head injuries in the incident, which was caught on a neighbor’s surveillance camera.
On Monday, Superior Court Judge Blaine Bowman sentenced the man who pushed her through the door to 15 years to life in prison.
The sentencing comes about a month after a Vista jury found William Sutton, who turned 69 last week, guilty of second-degree murder in Wood’s death.
Sutton had been a live-in caregiver to Wood’s best friend, Marian Kubic, 92. The two women lived less than 500 feet from each other in a gated senior community off Lake Boulevard in Oceanside.
Sutton had first befriended Kubic a few years ago, at a fast-food restaurant where several seniors spent their mornings. Eventually, he moved in with her and called her “mom.”
But Sutton had a reputation as a bully in the community. His probation report said he had “terrorized the elderly ladies of the victim’s neighborhood” for two years.
Most of Kubic’s friends shied away, intimidated by him, the prosecutor said. But Wood kept coming around.
Bowman told the defendant he was “not fooled by your sham.”
“You were not a caregiver,” Bowman said. “You were a bully.”
Wood had been small — about 4 feet, 11 inches, and less than 100 pounds — but she kept an eye on Kubic, her best friend for 30 years.
On the day she was attacked, Wood had been visiting Kubic. She left when Sutton came home, but went back to retrieve her glasses.
A neighbor’s surveillance captured what happened next.
On the video, the kitchen door opens and then slams in Wood’s face — twice. She does not leave.
She is then yanked into the home through the door, then quickly launched backwards through it, feet in the air.
While Wood was on the ground — she lay there, bleeding, for four or five minutes — Sutton came out and tossed her glasses and keys at her.
After Wood got up and staggered away, Sutton grabbed a garden hose and rinsed her blood off of the patio.
Sutton told police Wood had fallen.
Her doctor called her head injuries “a death sentence,” Deputy District Attorney Garret Wong said.
After a hospital stay, Wood was placed in hospice care in early May 2016.
A few weeks later, in July 2016, Wood died. She was 94.
In November, a North County jury found Sutton guilty after deliberating less than two hours. The jurors viewed the video footage of the incident in court.
The neighbor whose camera recorded the incident said she and her husband had feared Sutton, and installed surveillance equipment for that reason. One of the cameras was pointed at the home Sutton shared with Kubic.
“One camera had his name on it — period,” Jowann Hiykel said after the hearing. “We had it aimed just for him.”
Sutton did not make a statement during the hearing.
[email protected]
(760) 529-4945
Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
Copyright © 2024 MediaNews Group