Schizophrenic who knifed mum 7 times was freed just days earlier
A SCHIZOPHRENIC knifeman who slashed a mother pushing a pram six days after he was released from jail yesterday pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
The attack by Mark Brazant, 44, could have been prevented were it not for a series of blunders by healthcare and prison bosses, it emerged.
Brazant ambushed Josephine Conlon from behind, stabbing her in the face and neck seven times with a kitchen knife.
Mrs Conlon, 36, a marketing manager for McDonald’s, feared that she would be raped during the attack last December, and she was left with wounds to her left eye, right cheek and neck.
Brazant had denied meaning to seriously injure the mother of three, but at the Old Bailey yesterday he admitted attempting to murder her in Streatham Hill, south London.
Six days before the stabbing, Brazant had finished an eightweek jail term for attacking four women in November.
Brazant, who also had a previous conviction for carrying a blade, had been due to be picked up outside HMP Thameside, in southeast London, by a healthcare worker from the West London NHS Trust, to be taken by taxi to a home in Ealing, west London, run by Enriched Care.
But nobody arrived and he was allowed to leave the jail unmonitored, with just a freedom travel pass and a week’s supply of the anti-psychotic drug denzapine.
Enriched Care team leader Ben Omullo, who runs the home for five patients, told the hearing he had reported Brazant as missing when he did not arrive there on Christmas Eve.
Brazant had previously disappeared from the home ‘several times’, Mr Omullo told the court. Instead, Brazant, who was on a 12month licence, travelled to a probation centre in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, to which he had been directed by prison staff.
But when he arrived, he was told there was no record of him and he was sent away. It was later discovered that he should have been sent to a different office.
Brazant, who was not seen again until he attacked Mrs Conlon, handed himself in at a police station on January 2. He will be sentenced next month.
West London NHS Trust said there had been a cross-agency investigation into why Brazant had not been collected from jail.
The Prison Service has yet to make a comment.