Murder of Will could have been prevented
THE murder of a talented university student who was stabbed to death by a paranoid schizophrenic in his halls of residence was “preventable”, according to an independent report.
Birkdale student William Lound was knifed 11 times by out-of-control and homeless Lee Arnold, who targeted and attacked the 30-year-old at his university halls in Salford in February 2016.
It was ruled a homophobic and transphobic hate crime murder, given that Mr Lound was gay and sometimes liked to wear women’s clothes and make-up, which infuriated his would-be killer.
Mr Lound had allowed Arnold back to his digs to use his shower but Arnold, then 37, launched a frenzied knife attack before scrawling on his bedroom wall: “Your not reddy for me. I always win. Tick tock.”
Just months after the tragedy, Mr Lound’s younger sister Virginia, 28, took her own life.
Now, an independent investigation by Niche into the care and treatment of Arnold, who was a mental health service user, has made a number of recommendations, stating: “Our view is that the homicide of Will was preventable, taking the longer-term view of (Lee’s) journey through mental health services.”
The report published this week was carried out by independent management consultancy Niche Health and Social Care, and was commissioned by NHS England.
It details how just four months before Arnold murdered Mr Lound, who had been on a scholarship studying IT at Salford University, he had contacted the police and told them he had “urges to hurt someone”.
As a result he was taken to hospital where he revealed he had been “hearing voices commanding him to kill people”.
Despite this, Arnold was discharged from a psychiatric unit just four months before he brutally attacked Mr Lound, stabbing him up to 11 times with a seven-inch knife, and hadn’t been taking clozapine to treat his mental health conditions.
In August 2017, at Manchester Crown Court, Lee Arnold was jailed for life with a minimum of 23 years and four months after pleading guilty to murder.
Later that year, an inquest heard Arnold had been on bail at the time of the murder for the theft of a mobile phone – but he repeatedly failed to comply with the conditions of his bail which required him to report to a police station three times a week.
Due to an omission by a Greater Manchester Police employee to notify the relevant station of Arnold’s bail conditions, no action was taken to enforce them and the jury ruled this “possibly contributed” to Mr Lound’s death.
Niche recommends Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust (GMMH) amend its AWOL policy to ensure that any decision to discharge a missing patient “in their absence is explicitly risk assessed, supported by a detailed decisionmaking tool, and reported on centrally to ensure practice is monitored”.
It also advocates that “arrangements are made to appropriately grade those patients with complex needs and often forensic and substance misuse histories who are at high risk of disengagement from mental health services”.
The final recommendation is that NHS Manchester CCG should “assure themselves that GMMH is identifying the cohort of patients at most risk of disengagement from services, who have complex needs and often forensic histories with a background of drug abuse”.
Speaking after the report’s publication, mum Mo Lound said: “My view that the system – starved of cash as it is – was to blame has been confirmed, firstly by the inquest findings and then by this report.
“Will’s death, although perhaps not predictable, was certainly preventable.
“The thread running through Lee Arnold’s care was lack of information. The clinicians who treated him failed to look into his medical history, inexcusable in the age of electronic communication.
“Fortunately his social worker did take the trouble to make this information available. Still it was ignored. The fact that he had spent years in Ashworth followed by years in medium secure accommodation should have alerted the authorities to how dangerous Lee Arnold was.”
Neil Thwaite, chief executive of Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust said: “On behalf of the Trust, I would like to again offer our deepest condolences to Mrs Lound.”