A New York home health aide is behind bars after prosecutors say she crept into her elderly patient’s bedroom in the dead of night and tried to kill her with an 8-inch chef’s knife. Amanda Fraser, 23, was charged with attempted murder after investigators say surveillance cameras captured every chilling moment of the Oct. 29 assault on 84-year-old Wendy Wilson in Massapequa.
According to Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly, the clock had barely hit 2:08 a.m. when Fraser entered Wilson’s room as the older woman slept. What happened next, prosecutors say, was slow, deliberate, and horrifying: Fraser allegedly drove the blade into Wilson’s torso and held it there for a full 16 minutes—whispering for the elderly woman to “succumb,” “let go,” and “stop fighting.”
Wilson, jolted awake by agony, tried desperately to pull the knife out. Fraser, prosecutors say, tightened her grip and kept pressing down.
At 2:28 a.m., cameras caught Fraser pulling the knife free and walking out of the house, leaving the bleeding woman alone in her bed. Not long after, exterior cameras allegedly showed Fraser attempting to ram the home with her Dodge Charger before she abandoned the car and fled on foot. By the next morning, the vehicle still sat crumpled on the front lawn.
It wasn’t until the morning aide arrived that Wilson was found, groaning and unable to move. Police raced to the home around 8:30 a.m., and Wilson was rushed to the hospital with a punctured lung that later became infected. She spent weeks recovering and turned 85 during her stay.
Fraser was arrested later that same day in Queens. WCBS reported that she underwent a psychiatric evaluation before her arraignment on Nov. 3. Aides at Home, the agency that employed her, said only that they are cooperating with investigators.
A grand jury indicted Fraser on attempted second-degree murder, multiple assault charges, and several counts related to endangering an elderly and vulnerable person. She is being held at the Nassau County Correctional Center and is due back in court on Dec. 9.
For Wilson’s family, who installed cameras to keep their mother safe, the footage that saved her life is now the stuff of nightmares.
