What happened
At about 4am on Thursday 24 May 2018 a neighbour in Holloway, north London, heard a scream. The London Ambulance Service was called at 4.15am to a first-floor flat, and two crews treated one person before taking her to hospital.
She was a 61-year-old home care worker, employed by an agency commissioned by Islington Council. She was admitted shortly after 7am and died shortly before 11am.
The Metropolitan Police said her injuries were believed to have been sustained “at a residential address where she was working as a carer”. They arrested her 95-year-old client, described as frail and using a walking stick, on suspicion of murder, and said they were not looking for anyone else. Neither the worker nor the man was named by police.
The outcome
The 95-year-old was bailed and taken to hospital with pre-existing health needs, pending transfer to a place that could manage his “complex health and care needs”. He was reported to have dementia.
No charge, prosecution or inquest finding has been reported in the sources read. The record attributes that to the suspect’s age and health. Nothing on the record establishes what happened in the flat, and this page does not suggest otherwise.
What went wrong
The visit was lone, and it was in the early hours. Both facts are on the record. The rest of the system is not: the risk assessment for the visit, the check-in arrangement, and the reason the call was scheduled before dawn are absent from every source.
Workers read risk from a client’s history, and this client’s history was age and frailty. A man of 95 with dementia and a walking stick does not sit on a risk register as a threat. That is the gap. The risk picture was built from the client’s profile, the call was planned around it, and the one factor nobody priced was that she would be alone in a first-floor flat with the door shut.
Her employer, City and County Healthcare Group, and the leader of the council both said they were devastated. Neither statement describes a procedure.
What it teaches
The client profile is not a risk assessment. Frailty, dementia and age change what a worker can do and what they might not anticipate, and none of them means a lone visit needs less planning than a visit to a client with a forensic history.
Early-morning calls deserve their own assessment. A 4am visit puts a worker in a building when few people are awake, and a neighbour hearing a scream is not a check-in. If the only record of a visit is the rota and the call log, the employer cannot show afterwards that it was risk assessed, or that anyone was in contact during it.
Questions for the room
- What does your risk assessment capture about a client whose only risk factor is frailty and confusion?
- On an overnight call, who knows you are there, and what time should they expect to hear from you?
- If a worker does not check in, how long before someone is at the door, and who decides?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Three independent outlets were read: the Guardian, BBC News and Leymar Healthcare. They agree on the date, the address, the ages and the arrest. They do not describe how the head injury happened, and no source reports a charge or an inquest. The worker’s name was withheld by police and is not reconstructed here. The employer is named for its statement only; no finding was made against it.
Our lone working training covers check-in routines for home visits, including calls made before dawn.
Sources
- The Guardian, May 2018 · https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/25/man-95-arrested-death-of-carer-islington-london
- BBC News, May 2018 · https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-44259665
- Leymar Healthcare, May 2018 · https://leymarhealthcare.co.uk/95-year-old-arrested-on-suspicion-of-murder-of-home-care-worker/
Reviewed 20 October 2026.