Failed asylum seeker killed 87-year-old who gave him a home

Paranoid schizophrenic cut her throat, smashed her head on kitchen floor and strangled her, court told

A FRAIL elderly woman who let a failed asylum seeker live “like a grandson” in her home in a North Yorkshire village was brutally killed by him, a judge heard yesterday.

Brenda Blainey, 87, met Shahin Darvish-narenjbon in a Leeds restaurant in 2013 when he was a student, Leeds Crown Court heard, and invited him to live with her in her home in the tourist village of Thornton-le-dale. But on Jan 5 last year, the Iranian national, a paranoid schizophrenic, strangled her, smashed her head on the kitchen floor, stabbed her in the chest and cut her throat, the court was told.

Nicholas Lumley KC, prosecuting, said Mrs Blainey was placing an order by phone with the village shop when the line went dead. She could not be contacted again, he said, despite 12 calls by the concerned shopkeeper.

Mr Lumley said the assumption was that the attack on her started at that point.

The defendant was born in Tehran but had lived in the UK from the age of 15. He had also lived in the US, where he spent time in a psychiatric unit. Mr Lumley said the defendant’s permission to remain in the UK expired in 2015, and his application for asylum had been unsuccessful, as had his appeal against a refusal to allow him to stay.

The prosecutor said Darvish-narenjbon met Mrs Blainey at Carluccio’s restaurant in Leeds in 2013, and she had offered him a room in her home, where she “provided him with food and other home comforts, as he was studying in Leeds”.

He said they had a “grandma-grandson relationship” and spoke regularly while he was away studying. Mrs Blainey also attended his masters degree graduation ceremony and provided him with a study and a car.

Darvish-narenjbon, formerly of Tinshill Lane, Cookridge, Leeds, appeared in court by videolink from Rampton high-security hospital.

Members of Mrs Blainey’s family heard James Stoddart, a forensic psychiatrist, tell the judge that the defendant was “acutely psychotic” and suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Darvish-narenjbon denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing, which was accepted by the prosecution. He will be sentenced tomorrow.

Darvish-narenjbon, now 35, will be deported if he is ever released from secure hospital or prison.