Killer of Alzheimer's wife held

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- A 77-year-old man is being held by police in Italy after killing his elderly wife, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, in her hospital bed, police have told CNN.

The man walked in to the geriatrics ward at the hospital in the town of Prato, in Tuscany, where his 82-year-old wife was being cared for, around 5 p.m. Saturday, said Fabio Di Chierri, the assistant police chief in Prato.

In front of five other patients, the man took out a gun and shot his wife twice in the head and once in the chest, Di Chierri said.

Afterward the man called police to tell them what he had done, he said.

According to Italian daily newspaper La Stampa, he placed the weapon -- a Taurus handgun -- in the corner of the room and awaited the police.

Security staff at the Misericordia e Dolce di Prato hospital were alerted by the sound of gun shots and when they arrived on the ward found the man waiting on a seat next to his wife, he added.

According to Di Chierri, the man told them he had carried out the shooting because he could no longer bear to see his wife suffering from the disease, a degenerative and irreversible brain disorder, which mainly effects old people.

She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last eight years and the disease was in its advanced stages, he said. Di Chierri added that she had been admitted to hospital five days before the incident.

Police have not yet released the name of the man, saying only that he was a retired traffic warden with two children, one of whom is a police officer.

He is being held in police custody on suspicion of voluntary aggravated homicide, police said.

Approximately 14.4 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's, according to research conducted in 2005 by leading scientists for the charity Alzheimer's Disease International and published in the medical journal The Lancet. E-mail to a friend

CNN's Hada Messia in Rome contributed to this report