A lecturer and a City worker with so much to live for. Two random knife attacks. And a lifetime’s agony for their loved ones ...
SENSELESS ATTACK 1
‘My heart is broken, my family is broken’
A PARANOID schizophrenic with a history of violence and drug abuse killed a lecturer months after being released from a psychiatric hospital, a court heard yesterday.
Mark Loveridge, 39, had stopped taking medication to control his aggression before he stabbed 30- year- old Daniel Young to death in a park.
Weeks earlier, Loveridge began taking cocaine and amphetamines that ‘exacerbated and triggered’ his mental illness.
His victim’s family yesterday said they had been left broken by their grief which ‘knows no bounds’.
The cannabis addict claimed he heard ‘voices’ shortly before plung- ing the blade into Mr Young’s stomach as his victim went to work.
Mr Young was about to start the second day of his ‘dream job’ as a teaching fellow in tourism at Coventry University’s London campus when he was killed.
Half an hour earlier, Loveridge had stabbed Polish builder Kamil Bulat, 23, twice in the buttocks as he put tools into his car.
Part-time gardener Loveridge then phoned his boss to say he was going to be late before the fatal attack on Mr Young near Morden Tube station, South London, on January 19 last year.
The convicted drug dealer and former gang member had been discharged from a psychiatric unit where he was an out-patient in June 2015, the Old Bailey heard.
Doctors had told him to reduce the dose of his medication, but he claimed he forgot to keep taking it then stopped completely because it made him drowsy.
The attack left Mr Young’s family, of Paignton, Devon, and girlfriend Ellen Ball devastated by the ‘inexplicable’ death.
In a victim impact statement, Julie Young said her son was ‘the rock’ of the family and a ‘bright star’.
She said Mr Young’s father was now a ‘broken man’, adding: ‘My heart is broken, my family is broken. My last visit to St George’s Morgue will haunt me for the rest of my life.
‘I was denied giving my boy a last kiss and cuddle and that’s not fair.
‘Nothing I do or say will change the outcome.
‘All the things we were planning with Daniel as part of his new career have been taken away. This type of grief knows no bounds.
‘Our lives will never ever be normal again.’ Mr Young’s brother Thomas – aged 17 at the time of the killing – said he had suffered depression and panic attacks up to four times a day following the death.
Loveridge admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility, as well as causing wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for the attack on Mr Bulat, last month.
William Boyce QC, prosecuting, accepted the pleas after two psychiatrists produced reports about Loveridge that showed he was suffering paranoid schizophrenia.
Describing the fatal attack on Mr Young, Mr Boyce told the court: ‘The voices… said “get ready” and told him that the first person he saw who walked past him from a certain direction was the man he should stab.
‘He walked up to the designated person, who was tragically Mr Young. Without any warning, Mr Young had simply been stabbed in the abdomen as he walked through the park.’
The lecturer was found unconscious by commuters and he bled to death at the scene despite attempts by paramedics to save him.
Loveridge was arrested a week later at his home following a struggle with officers.
He then thwarted attempts to interview him by using ‘aggressive and violent behaviour’.
Loveridge later told police he ‘had been woken early by the voices’ on the day of the killing.
Forensic psychiatrist Philip Joseph told the court the defendant had a history of amphetamine abuse that could trigger violent episodes.
He said that Loveridge had believed he was under police surveillance and being framed, until forensic evidence linked him to the knife used in the attacks.
Loveridge, from Mitcham in South London, is due to be sentenced on Friday.