Hospital horror
Nurse’s ex ‘stabs her AND her daughter in murder-suicide rampage across town’
A KNIFE maniac stabbed to death his former wife and her daughter before dying in a car crash minutes later.
Emma Robertson Coupland, 39, was targeted in the car park outside a hospital where she had just finished a shift.
Twenty minutes later, her eldest daughter Nicole Anderson, 24, was attacked three miles away near a takeaway shop where she worked.
A third incident involving a serious car crash was reported to police a short time later.
The 40-year-old driver – named locally as Mrs Coupland’s exhusband Steven Robertson – was pronounced dead at the scene. It is thought to be a suspected double murder-suicide.
Police Scotland said yesterday the incidents were linked and they were not looking for anyone else.
Armed police were first scrambled at 7.45pm on Thursday when Mrs Coupland, a mother of four, was found seriously injured outside Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock. The hospital was put into lockdown amid fears of a terror attack with ambulances redirected to University Hospital Ayr and the public told to stay away.
Police were then seen sprinting through the town centre following reports of the second attack on Portland Street. Miss Anderson, who was due to be married, was taken to Crosshouse Hospital but later died.
As police responded to the stabbing, reports emerged of the car crash near a viaduct on the C50 – a minor road between the B7036 and the A76 on the outskirts of Kilmarnock.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was among those who expressed shock at the double murder yesterday. She wrote on Twitter: ‘Dreadful news. My thoughts are with the bereaved.
‘Thinking too of everyone at Crosshouse Hospital, already dealing with the tough circumstances of Covid. I’m also grateful to our emergency services.’
Family and friends paid tribute to the mother and daughter and flowers were left at the hospital.
Miss Anderson’s fiancee Vicky King said: ‘So glad I have all these memories with you.
‘You’ll never know how much you mean to me. I will love you till the end of time my darling. I will miss that beautiful smile, that wee gorgeous person inside and out.’
Mrs Coupland’s cousin Alan added: ‘Still not wrapped my head round what happened last night – every time you hear of something terrible happening... you never imagine it being someone you know let alone family.
‘Two genuinely lovely people who never deserved that, taken far too soon in life.’
The hospital reopened at 10.30pm on Thursday but several roads in Kilmarnock remained closed yesterday while investigations continued.
Chief Superintendent Faroque Hussain said: ‘Understandably, people will be shocked by what has happened. We are still in the process of establishing the full circumstances.’
NHS Ayrshire and Arran chief executive John Burns said staff would be receiving support. He said: ‘Our thoughts and condolences are with all those involved. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the professionalism of the staff involved in the incident. [They] reacted with care and compassion.’
‘Two genuinely lovely people’