A judge called a former caregiver a "bully" when sentencing him to 15 years in prison on Monday for pushing a 94-year-old woman through a screen door, resulting in her death months later.
William Sutton, 68, received the maximum sentence for charges of second-degree murder and elderly abuse resulting in death, stemming from an incident on April 16, 2016 that led to Margaret Wood's death 11 weeks later.
"The court was not fooled by your sham tag as caregiver. You were not a caregiver; you were a bully," the judge said during the sentencing. Sutton was denied probation.
Sutton cared for 93-year-old Marian Kubic at her Oceanside home. On the day of the deadly push, Kubic was paid a visit by her best friend, Wood.
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Surveillance video captured by cameras next door showed Wood being pushed through Kubic's front door and down three porch steps. She stumbled backward onto the concrete and cracked her skull and broke her nose.
The man who pushed Wood was identified as Sutton, who had been Kubic's caregiver for two years. He was arrested on murder charges on July 11, two days after Wood's death.
Wood's family packed a courtroom in Vista to ask the judge to give Sutton the maximum sentence possible. One by one, Margaret Wood's children and grandchildren described the pain of losing their family matriarch after the violent attack.
"He left her lying on the ground helpless and bleeding. He never, in any way, attempted to help," Wood's granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Wood, said to the judge Monday. "These are not the actions of a normal, remorseful person. these are the actions of a monster."
Kubic died less than two months after the altercation and before Sutton's murder trial could begin, but she recorded testimony for the trial, and on behalf of her best friend, while in hospice care.
Sutton sat in silence and no one spoke on his behalf during the sentencing.
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