The owner of a Missouri nursing home has suspended an employee and pledged to update its policies after a resident allegedly murdered another resident following a fight at the facility. 

“We take ownership for it, we are going to put policies in place that if anything like this happens, the facility will have to put a one-on-one with the resident,” Wentric Williams, CEO of Senath South Health Care Center, a 150-bed skilled nursing facility in Senath, MO, told local media.  

The incident took place July 6, just one day after a fight between residents Shedrick White, 57, and Marvin Hale, 38. The two had been ordered to separate rooms by staff.

The next day a nurse found White slumped on the floor with a phone cord around his shoulders.

White has since been charged with murder for allegedly strangling Hale. He is being held without bond. White admitted to being involved in the first fight with Hale, but denied involvement in the second altercation, according to the Dunklin County Sheriff’s Department.

Staff told investigators the nurse that told the two residents to go to separate rooms did not check if they followed those orders after the first fight. 

“The resident should have never been back in his room. He told the aide that he was going to go back to his room. Instead of the aide telling the nurse, she let him go back to his room,” Williams said during a press conference Thursday.

The nurse has been suspended as officials investigate the incident, he added. 

“[This] never should have happened,” Williams said.