Rockland Psychiatric Patient Gets 20 Years in Prison for Slaying Fellow Patient

A Rockland Psychiatric Center patient who killed a fellow patient with a two-foot-long metal pole in a fight has been sentenced to 20 years in state prison.

Curtis Wilson, 53, pleaded guilty on Jan. 10 in Rockland County Court in New City to first-degree manslaughter for the Jan. 16, 2012, death of RPC patient Vincent Knandler. Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said the men were involved with an altercation on the RPC campus in Orangeburg when Wilson hit Knadler with the metal pole.

Knadler was taken to Nyack Hospital after the 5:16 p.m. incident, and we was pronounced dead at 6:01 p.m.

Through the guilty plea, Wilson waived a psychiatric defense. He had previously been an inpatient in residential treatment on at least 15 separate occasions at several New York psychiatric hospitals during the past 25 years. Wilson was being treated at RPC during his sixteenth inpatient hospitalization at the time of the killing.

Upon release from state prison, Wilson will remain under post-release supervision for five years.

First Assistant District Attorney James Mellion, Supervising Assistant District Attorney Dominic Crispino and Senior Assistant District Attorney Janine Kovacs prosecuted the case.