AN ASPIRING cage fighter, who regularly smoked skunk cannabis, decapitated a grandmother during a 45minute rampage after becoming convinced she was “Hitler back from the dead”, a court has heard.
Nicholas Salvador, 25, who also cut the heads off two cats, had to be Tasered six times by police after hacking 82-year-old Italian café owner Palmira Silva to death with a machete in a north London back garden.
Mr Salvador, who had been staying with a friend’s family three doors down from Mrs Silva in Edmonton, went on his violent spree on September 4 last year after arming himself with a wooden pole and large knife.
The former fitness instructor had lost his job putting up adverts on billboards three days before the killing and was described as a heavy drinker and a regular user of skunk cannabis.
Opening the trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutor Jonathan Rees said: “At the start of the rampage he effectively decapitated two cats belonging to his host family. The evidence suggests he thought they were demons.”
He added the jury would hear Mr Salvador “was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia that so affected his mental faculties that he did not know the nature and quality of the acts he did when he killed Mrs Silva. At the time of the killing he thought he was killing some sort of supernatural entity such as Hitler back from the dead.”
He said Mr Salvador had later told a psychiatrist: “I thought she was Hitler. She was really an evil being in the shape of an old woman. She was an alien from outer space.”
After decapitating Mrs Silva and brandishing her head towards a police helicopter hovering above, Mr Salva- dor moved through two back gardens before attempting to break down the door of another house in the street.
Terrified neighbours had to be led away by police, who eventually cornered Mr Salvador in a cupboard in a nearby house. During the arrest Mr Salvador repeated “red is the colour” and “I am the king” and tried to chew a skirting board. He then bit one of the police officers trying to arrest him on the shin causing a deep wound that required hospital treatment.
After being Tasered six times he was eventually subdued and later trans- ferred to the maximum security Broadmoor Hospital for treatment.
The court heard how Mrs Silva had come to the UK in 1953 and after marrying her husband Domenico in 1960 had opened and run a popular café in Edmonton Green.
She and her husband had two children, six grandchildren and one greatgrandchild and after her husband’s death in 2008 she had continued to work in the café as well as maintaining a vegetable patch in her garden.
Mr Salvador was born in the UK but spent his early childhood with his grandmother in Nigeria after his parents split up. He went to primary school in Hackney and secondary school in Edmonton before studying media studies at college.
At the time of the incident he had been staying at the home of school friend Dominic Thorne whose family said Mr Salvador had claimed to be a Muslim and had attended a mosque.
But the court heard he had also discussed Buddhism before rejecting religion entirely about a month before the killing.
There is no dispute that Mr Salvador killed Mrs Silva but he denies murder by reason of insanity.
The trial continues.