ΑΤΗΕΝS – A 23-year-old man with a history of serious mental illness is facing charges that he beat to death his 83-year-old grandmother in an attack everyone in his village said they knew was likely to happen.

“It was an expected. We knew that things would not end well,” said Dimosthenis Dalkaranis,President of the village of Chrysochori in remarks to state broadcaster ERT. Neither the suspect nor the victim were identified.

“There was trouble every so often that demanded a response from the police, and we sent people over from the Help at Home program a few times, but they were turned away, both by the deceased and by the perpetrator,” he said.

That was in reference to the municipal outreach program that provides assistance for the elderly and infirm at their homes, but no explanation why the woman won’t allow any intervention.

According to local media, the 23-year-old had also been arrested and warned by the police several times over the years for drug-related and other offenses and is believed to have beaten his grandmother for hours.

He reportedly confessed to hitting her when he was arrested by police, said Kathimerini, adding that authorities were called by a local undertaker who said he had received a call from the man telling him his grandmother died in a fall.

But the report said her body showed signs of extensive injuries that were more consistent with a physical assault than an accident, though a forensic pathologist still has to determine the exact cause of death.

“Social Services had removed the 23-year-old from the house twice in the past couple of years and took him to a psychiatric facility, but he was released shortly after on both occasions and allowed to go back home,” Dalkaranis said.

“We had advised her,” he added, referring to the elderly woman who lived alone with the 23-year-old after his mother left the family several years ago and his father, who also reportedly suffers from mental health problems, moved out of the main house and into a remote shed in the garden.

It was not clear  whether the 23-year-old had been taken to prison or to a psychiatric facility, the newspaper also said.