‘Psychiatric patient asked me when I wanted to die’
A WALKER has described the moment an escaped psychiatric patient approached him on a secluded footpath and put a belt around his neck after asking when he wanted to die.
David Owen was walking to a pub in the Whitchurch area of Cardiff on June 25, 2015 when he crossed paths with Khoung Lam who had absconded from his carer earlier that day while on escorted leave from Whitchurch Hospital.
Mr Lam, who died following the incident, had also run away from police when they found him in the nearby Asda cafe, an inquest into his death at Cardiff Coroner’s Court heard.
Mr Owen, who told the jury he wished he had not been there that day, said Mr Lam said to him “do you want to die” or “what day do you want to die”, after they passed each other on the footpath through a wooded area.
“I remember him just pulling [his belt] off and I was thinking I was in trouble,” said Mr Owen. “My fear was that there was noone else around. If he overpowered me, I was in trouble.”
Mr Lam, 42, of Cardiff, had a history of mental health problems starting in 2004 and resulting in him being treated as an inpatient at Whitchurch Hospital
twice. The last occasion was from June 11 2015 following a fight with his brother when he smashed furniture, the inquest heard.
Mr Owen, 58 at the time, said he tried to escape by going down a footpath that led to the supermarket.
“The man chased me, still saying ‘you are going to die’ or similar words,” he said. “Then just as I got to where the footpaths joined, I fell.”
Mr Owen said he managed to get up but Mr Lam was only feet away from him and began swinging the belt so that the buckle struck him on the head.
He said Mr Lam put the belt around his neck but that he managed to pry it off by pulling it over his chin, nose and forehead in three stages while they were wrestling on the floor.
Mr Owen said he was “exhausted” when he managed to take the belt, put it around Mr Lam’s neck and apply pressure with “whatever strength I had left”.
He said: “He had stopped hitting me on the head and I was just thinking is he going unconscious or is he faking it? I was just a bit scared of letting go.”
Mr Owen, a window fitter, said he let go and started walking towards Asda but looked back and “thought [from] the way he was slumped I feared he may have died”.
He called the police from the supermarket. The jury heard how he had stopped work after the incident and had counselling.
Answering questions from the coroner Mr Owen, who was arrested after the incident but not charged, said it was not his intention for Mr Lam to die but to make him unconscious so that he could get away.
The inquest heard Mr Lam was detained under the Mental Health Act on June 15 2015 after saying he would only stay two days at the hospital and that he had been “irritable, confrontational and sexually inappropriate” during his stay there.
On another occasion he had “violently smashed a table into a window” after hearing his mother had visited him.
One doctor who assessed him said in a statement: “He was a risk of harm to others, particularly his family, and required a further period of inpatient assessment and treatment.”
Pc Gareth Stephenson was one of the officers who found Mr Lam in the Asda cafe.
He said he allowed Mr Lam to finish his food before indicating for him to follow him to the police car through the cafe’s fire exit.
“I opened the door, I turned to him and I was going to take hold of his arm; at the point he bolted,” Pc Stephenson said.
He said handcuffs “were always an option” but might exacerbate a mental health patient’s symptoms and police tried to avoid using them as much as possible.
“I think if someone is looking to run you can normally see them looking around, searching for possible exits,” he said. “He was not doing any of that.”
The inquest continues.