New probe in case of psychiatric patient who beheaded woman
A CORONER is to investigate whether more could have been done to prevent a psychiatric patient from decapitating a stranger in a street six years after she killed her own mother.
Nicola Edgington, 36, who had schizophrenia, murdered grandmother Sally Hodkin, 58, with a stolen butcher’s cleaver in Bexleyheath in October 2011. She also attempted to murder artist Kerry Clark, 22, on the same day. Edgington was jailed for 37 years in 2013.
On the day of the attacks, she rang police and said: “I’m dangerous. I need to go to a mental hospital. The last time I felt like this I killed my mum.”
The attacks happened two years after Edgington was released into the community by the Bracton NHS mental health clinic in Dartford.
Her release in 2009 was despite an order that she be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act, following her conviction for the manslaughter of her mother Marion at her home in East Sussex in 2005.
South London coroner Selena Lynch said the concerns of the victims’ families had not been dealt with by the 2013 trial, an NHS inquiry or the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). On the day of the attacks, Edgington was at the Oxleas House mental health assessment unit in Woolwich, but was not detained because she walked in voluntarily. She got a bus to Bexleyheath, bought a large knife from Asda and stole the cleaver from the butcher’s. The coroner, at a pre-inquest review this week, said she wanted to investigate whether there had been a breach by the State of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights — the right to life of each of the victims.
Ms Lynch said: “The issue for me is whether the state is at fault in the treatment and care of Miss Edgington. It’s about preventability and if there was a breach of Article 2.”
A lawyer for Oxleas House claimed that there should not be an inquest as nothing new would be learned.
But the coroner said: “We need to look at issues regarding preventability and interaction between police and the NHS and the issues of recognising risk by either agency. The family are entitled to ask questions about what decisions were made and either a jury or a coroner to come to a conclusion as to how she died and the circumstances leading up to that. There are issues around preventability that need explanation that weren’t fully dealt with in the IPCC or NHS England investigation or criminal proceedings.”
Mrs Hodkin’s son, Len Hodkin, who as a solicitor represented the family, said: “The IPCC report says that despite her mental state she [Edgington] was left unsupervised, but the independent report from the NHS says police officers were to blame. So we have two public bodies criticising each other and apportioning blame to each other. We need to get to the bottom of this.” The inquest is likely to be held in October.