SPITFIRE HERO, 90, KICKED TO DEATH ON NHS WARD
A SECOND World War fighter pilot has died after being attacked in an NHS hospital by a fellow patient.
Kenneth Tyrer, 90, hit his head and broke his hip when he was kicked to the floor. Two days later he was dead.
The family of the Hurricane and Spitfire pilot say he had been attacked by the man before on their ward at Yeovil Hospital. They had to report the fatal assault to police themselves – and Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s major crime unit is now investigating.
‘Somebody has to be accountable for his death,’ said Mr Tyrer’s son Bill, 58. ‘The man who has committed this crime has to pay for it, but the hospital has to take some responsibility.
‘He should have been safer than he was at home. He was the sort of person I thought was the backbone of Britain. He never complained, he never asked for anything. And the first time he did, this is what happened.
‘He fought for this country and now we have to fight for him.’
Mr Tyrer, who flew hundreds of missions for the Royal Air Force, was admitted to the hospital early last month with an infection.
Despite recovering he was not able to leave his general ward because neither the council nor the NHS would fund a care home place.
He had advanced dementia, was
going blind and was profoundly deaf – meaning that medics had considered him too vulnerable and frail to go back to living at home alone. The family said Mr Tyrer was not facing his attacker when he was kicked in the back and then again while on the floor.
The previous hospital attack on the grandfather is not believed to have led to any serious injuries. The hospital has launched an internal investigation into the war hero’s death on Sunday.
Bill Tyrer said: ‘They were possibly hoping it would go away. They gave no inclination there was anything serious.
‘When we heard our first reaction was just shock. It was only later on that we said, “He was attacked – shouldn’t we report this?”
‘A patient on the ward said how awful it was and something needed to be done about it.’
Mr Tyrer, who lives in Spain with his wife, said his father had to wait more than 24 hours to have an emergency operation on his hip after the assault on Friday.
And he said that after the surgery his father was placed back on the same ward as the man who had attacked him.
He also said the family had raised concerns about an injury to Mr Tyrer’s head but could not get the hospital to carry out a scan.
He said: ‘Our concerns are he had a head injury that the hospital refused to look at.’
His father, a former salesman from the vil- lage of Milborne Port in Somerset, spent more than 60 years with his wife Sheila before she went into a care home five years ago.
His family were arranging for him to move into a double room there with his wife, who he had married in 1949, four years after the end of the war.
His son said: ‘He should have walked out of the hospital into a double room with his wife of 66 years. They were going to be reunited.’ And he said it was not right that his parents would have had to sell their home to pay for their care, adding: ‘They felt they had put into the National Health Service and when they came to make their claim on that insurance it did not pay out.
‘We have just lost our father and we cannot get him back, but we would hope that maybe something good can come out of this. I don’t want this to happen to any other family.’
Avon and Somerset Police last night said no one had been arrested over the death.
A spokesman said: ‘We are investigating the circumstances around the death of a man at Yeovil Hospital. The hospital is helping us with our inquiries.’
A Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesman added: ‘We are working closely with the police and the coroner’s office following the death of a patient at the weekend. We are also carrying out our own internal investigation. Our thoughts are with the family at this very difficult time.’
Mr Tyrer, who learnt to fly in South Africa, started on Hurricanes but was also flying Spitfires by the end of the war.
‘Our first reaction was just shock’