Road rage killer NHS trust fears up to nine more deadly failures
A BELEAGUERED NHS trust which left a paranoid schizophrenic free to kill may have failed other families, resulting in nine deaths, it was revealed last night.
Medics are in the dock over a series of killings after Matthew Daley was convicted of stabbing retired solicitor Don Lock to death while in the grip of violent delusions.
The 79-year-old victim’s family lashed out at mental health workers who ignored repeated pleas from the killer’s family to section him before he claimed a life.
As Daley, 35, faces an indeterminate term in a secure hospital, the NHS trust that looked after him has commissioned an urgent independent review of another nine similar tragedies.
There were emotional scenes at Lewes Crown Court yesterday as a jury ruled that Daley could not be held responsible for the killing last July. The victim’s daughter Sandra, 53, wept as jurors delivered a verdict of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
The court had heard how the once-promising architect stabbed defenceless Mr Lock to death in a ‘road rage’ attack while in the grip of psychotic delusions. Mr Lock suffered 39 stab wounds on a grass verge of the A24 near the Findon, Sussex.
During the nine-day trial, the knifeman’s family revealed his unfounded obsession with ‘dis-
‘We got things wrong’
gusting old people’ was just the latest in a string of paranoid delusions covering more than a decade. Daley’s parents first took him to a GP in 2008 and said he had been hearing voices for two Over the next seven years they were sidelined, ignored and dismissed by consultants who insisted he had Asperger’s, which cannot be treated.
Even when Daley started fighting strangers in the street, doctors refused to admit him to hospital. His father John, 62, wrote to carers at least four times to warn them his son could hurt or even kill someone.
The trust has commissioned an ‘independent review’, along with NHS England, of the Daley killing and nine others in the past five years involving its patients. There are understood to be fears of repeated failures by clinical staff and managers and questions whether more could have been done to prevent up to ten deaths.
Mr Lock’s son Andrew, 59, blamed the NHS for his father’s death. Standing beside his mother Maureen, 78, he said: ‘It is clear that Dad would still be here today if they had done their job properly.’
Colm Donaghy, who leads Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘I apologise unreservedly because the care we provided to Matthew Daley should have been better. We got things wrong.’