Man faces charges in beating at Oakwood

A Suffolk judge on Friday ordered the re-evaluation of a man’s mental competency to stand trial over the alleged assault of a 92-year-old woman inside now-closed Oakwood Assisted Living.

According to Circuit Court filings, William Keith Ruffin, exactly two years ago Saturday and then 42 years old, responded to internal voices when he allegedly beat Violet Compton nearly to death.

Ruffin had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and has abused crack cocaine, alcohol and marijuana, according to the court documents, which stated he had told investigators he had been napping in his room at the East Washington Street facility, when “he began to hear voices in his head.”

The voices told him, “Get up N—!” “The people” were “trying to take his face,” the voices said.

Ruffin told investigators that he thought Compton was one of the main people “trying to take his face off.”

Arriving at the facility about 6:12 p.m., first-responders found Compton “severely beaten and injured” after Ruffin “(beat) her about her face and head with (his) fists.” She was airlifted to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

Charged with aggravated malicious wounding, Ruffin has since been remanded to Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Suffolk and Central State Hospital in Petersburg, where staff have been working on his psychological rehabilitation.

His first hospitalization, according to court filings, was in 1999, and the pattern has been “involuntary psychiatric admission,” court-ordered medical treatment, improvement, but then relapse into substance abuse upon discharge.

Court filings describe two contacts with Western Tidewater Community Services Board. On March 26, 2012, he presented with “somatic delusions,” but improved “with support and being able to share his feelings;” he received an injection of Invega Sustenna, used in the treatment of schizophrenia, but resisted taking his anti-depressant Zoloft.

Ruffin’s second contact with board staff was on April 2, 2012 — three days before Compton was beaten at Oakwood — when “there was no indication given that he was suicidal or homicidal.”

At the beginning of February, concerned that his responses to questions indicated poor mental health, Judge Carl E. Eason Jr. declined to accept Ruffin’s not-guilty plea, and ordered the first evaluation of his competency to stand trial.

When Ruffin was later back before the court with his “competency restored,” doubts arose over whether he was still receiving, inside the jail, the same medications the state hospital had prescribed, Eason said in court Friday.

As a sheriff’s deputy escorted him into the courtroom, Ruffin gazed into the public gallery with an unfocused stare.

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Man faces charges in beating at Oakwood