The college professor who was beheaded by her son inside her Long Island, New York, apartment on Tuesday was just days away from getting the medication her son desperately needed, the News York Daily News has learned.
Reverend Robert Lubrano, the brother of the victim, Pat Ward, told the newspaper his sister had long struggled to find a psychiatrist who would accept her son Derek's insurance. At last she found one to help secure medication for her mentally ill son.
"She had an appointment set up for (Friday). She finally met a compassionate psychiatrist, but she'll never make it to see him," Lubrano told the newspaper.
On Tuesday, Derek Ward killed his 66-year-old mother, cut off her head and dragged the body outside their apartment in Farmingdale. After leaving her body in the street, he committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train at a nearby railroad station.
Derek Ward's family never got an official diagnosis of what made him sick. Though he dealt with psychiatric issues for 10 years, things took a turn for the worse when he began complaining of hearing voices the night his grandfather died in 2013.
Finding treatment for Derek proved difficult because at 35 years old, he was too old to be on his mother's insurance. His mother paid hundreds of dollars for doctor visits while she struggled to find a psychiatrist who would accept Medicaid, Lubrano told the newspaper.
Derek became increasingly erratic in the days before he killed his mother. He was not taking any medication at the time of the murder.
"He killed my sister because we couldn't get the prescription he needed. For four days, he didn't have his meds," Lubrano told the Daily News.
The grieving brother and uncle is still trying to understand how Derek, who was never violent towards his mother, could turn on the woman he loved more than anything.
"My nephew was not a bad person, (just) a sick person," Lubrano told the Daily News. "He had ADD and was dyslexic. [Pat] taught him how to read, then he became an avid reader, went back to school.
"He was really a good kid. Whatever happened after my father died, it broke him."
