Escapee From Hospital Held in Fatal Stabbing of Woman : Crime: Man reportedly broke out of bed restraints. The family of the 90-year-old victim from Ventura says she was killed with a kitchen knife.

A man who had been held in bed restraints since stabbing himself nearly two weeks ago escaped from Ventura County Medical Center early Friday and fatally stabbed a 90-year-old woman, police said.

Velasta Johnson was stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife in a bedroom of her house at 232 Agnus Drive in Ventura, relatives said. She was pronounced dead at 8:50 a.m. at the same hospital from which her alleged attacker had escaped. An autopsy is scheduled for today.

Kevin John Kolodziej, 25, whom police described as a transient from Virginia Beach, Va., was arrested at a neighbor’s house a few minutes after the stabbing. He was being held at the Ventura police station on suspicion of murder and was expected to be booked into the County Jail on Friday night.

Kolodziej had been in the hospital’s third-floor intensive care unit since Jan. 5, when Ventura police found him in a motel parking lot with stab wounds in the chest, stomach and throat, Sgt. Roger Nustad said. The wounds were later determined to be self-inflicted, Nustad said.

Kolodziej had been examined by a psychiatrist and other mental health officials, Nustad said. The detective did not know the results of the exam, and mental health officials said they could not comment.

Nustad said Kolodziej apparently broke a chest restraint and possibly a leg restraint intended to keep him in bed.

The victim’s husband, 90-year-old Clyde R. Johnson, said he saw the attacker about 8:15 a.m., shortly after he left his wife of 64 years to take his morning walk. Johnson said a strange-looking man in torn blue pajamas walked to the rear of an unoccupied house next door, saying he needed to bathe.

Johnson alerted his wife, who summoned their grandson, Kevin Hildreth, who was taking a shower. While the two men were out searching for the prowler--Hildreth wearing only a bath towel--the intruder apparently entered the unlocked back door and confronted Velasta Johnson.

“My grandma said there was some crazy guy in the yard,” Hildreth said. “We were out looking for the crazy guy, and the crazy guy was inside stabbing my grandma.”

The intruder then ran about 200 feet north on the broad, jacaranda-lined street to the house of Roger Williams.

“I saw this guy running around the yard,” Williams said, describing the man as “raggedy-looking.” Williams said he pushed the lock button on his back door just as the stranger tried to open it. The man then sat down on a wicker couch in Williams’ back yard and covered himself with a blanket, Williams said.

Williams called the police, who had already been summoned by Hildreth. The officers arrived with shotguns drawn. “The cop said he confessed,” Williams said.

Nustad said the murder weapon has not been found. Investigators with metal detectors were combing bushes and checking rooftops. The Johnsons’ daughter, Jackie Thetford, said a kitchen knife that her father had used that morning was missing.

The county hospital’s associate administrator, Patricia Rumpza, issued a one-sentence statement: “We cannot, under federal regulations or California law, comment on this case.” Another hospital worker said officials had ordered all employees not to discuss the case.

The employee, who asked not to be identified, said she saw Kolodziej walk out the hospital’s front door about 8 a.m., his blue hospital gown in tatters. She described him as about 5 feet, 9 inches tall, average weight and build, with matted, shoulder-length brown hair.

“He took off as fast as he could go,” said the employee, who described the man as angry-looking. She said he stopped to talk to some children who were walking past the hospital, then rounded the corner of Agnus Drive.

She said he may not have been observed leaving the intensive care unit “because there have been so many layoffs here.”

In any case, she said, “nobody was running after him. He was just cruising down the street, no problem.

“I thought about calling mental health,” she said, referring to county mental health facilities near the hospital. “But they let their people run around here all the time. How are you going to know who’s going to do something and who isn’t?

“I feel like crap. I should have called someone.”

Two longtime residents of Agnus Drive, which is the first street east of the county complex, said that over the years they have seen a few mental-health escapees, some of whom wore leg shackles.

“But nothing dangerous has ever happened,” said one woman, who has lived on the street since 1965. “Nobody’s ever been hurt before.”

Standing on his front sidewalk as neighbors and relatives tried to console him, the victim’s husband said he was angry that the assailant managed to escape from the hospital.

“They’ve got money for everything else,” Clyde Johnson said. “Why can’t they put these people where they belong?”

Thetford, the couple’s daughter, said Velasta Johnson had been a teacher years ago but became a full-time homemaker when she married.

“I never thought it would end this way,” Thetford said.