Mother cried ‘I love you’ as her son stabbed her
A MOTHER told her son ‘I love you’ as he stabbed her ‘again and again’ at their flat, an inquest heard yesterday.
Melvin James launched the horrific attack as his sister Anne-Marie, 33, lay fatally wounded in the hallway of the second-floor tower block apartment.
It came after he was released from hospital in Edinburgh after a diagnosis of ‘drug-induced psychosis’.
Footage showed police Tasering the knifewielding 36-year-old before officers fled the Wolverhampton high-rise, ‘terrified’ for their lives.
Mr James, who had self-inflicted knife wounds, was eventually subdued after armed police stormed the flat. Despite treatment, he died at the scene, but his mother Lynette, 59, survived.
An inquest jury hearing evidence into the deaths of Mr James and his sister watched dramatic police footage of the incident on March 8.
In harrowing evidence read by Black Country senior coroner Zafar Siddique, Mrs James told how she ‘sensed and felt something was seriously wrong’ when she heard her daughter shout ‘Mum!’.
She said: ‘I decided to run into the lounge and call the concierge from the phone. I see Melvin by the kitchen and he ripped the phone off the wall.
‘His eyes were red, fixed and he was staring at me. He plunged the knife into me, again and again. I said “I love you, son”.’
She managed to get to the bathroom, locked the door and rang 999 to tell police she had been stabbed and feared she was ‘slipping away’.
The mother of four added: ‘I said, “I’m going to die, my son has stabbed me and my daughter is on the floor”.’
The weekend before, her son and daughter were ‘happy and laughing’, she said, but unemployed Mr James had been in a ‘strange mood’ the night before the stabbings.
The next morning, she noticed he had opened all the windows and appeared ‘hot and sweating’.
She and her daughter planned to seek advice from her own doctor.
Police were initially called to Leasowes Drive after a neighbour reported ‘horrific sounds’ from the flat, with Mrs James’s panicked call coming soon after. The inquest heard how after unarmed police were forced to retreat, armed officers rushed in to disarm and then handcuff Mr James.
As they turned him over, they noticed his ‘serious abdominal injuries’ and handed him over to medics.
The inquest, in Oldbury, West Midlands, also heard from younger brother Leon James.
A month earlier, he had collected Melvin from Edinburgh after a hospital admission for a ‘medical episode’, and brought him back to live at his mother’s home.
Mr Siddique said: ‘He was taken to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, initially as a voluntary patient. He made some progress and was discharged on February 10, with a diagnosis of druginduced psychosis.’
The inquest continues.