Refugee locked up indefinitely for killing stranger in West End
A FORMER child soldier has been locked up indefinitely after he killed a stranger in a “ferocious” knife attack in London’s Oxford Street.
Tedi Fanta, 27, was on bail for brandishing a saw in Swansea days before he armed himself with a blade and travelled to London from his home in the South Wales city.
Shortly before 8pm on July 1 2021, he produced the weapon and jumped on Stephen Dempsey, a retired civil servant, from behind. Two passing skateboarders feared they had been caught up in a terror attack but hit Fanta with their boards in an attempt to disarm him. They then helped to restrain him until armed police arrived, while other members of the public tended to the 60-year-old victim, who had been visiting the capital from Essex.
Mr Dempsey suffered four stab wounds and died in hospital later that night from a chest wound.
Prosecutor Caroline Carberry KC told the Old Bailey Fanta was “seen carrying out a ferocious, random and unprovoked attack on a helpless and unsuspecting member of the public” She said: “His victim could have been anyone … in close proximity to him … that day in central London. Sadly for Stephen Dempsey and his family, it was him.”
Because Fanta, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was deemed unfit to stand trial, jurors did not have to determine his guilt – merely if they were sure he had committed the acts he was accused of, Ms Carberry said. They deliberated for less than an hour yesterday to find he committed the murder.
Eritrean-born Fanta, who arrived in Britain in 2014, had convictions for criminal damage and assaulting a police officer and emergency worker.
Patrick Upward KC, for Fanta, said he was conscripted into the Eritrean army aged 12 or 13 and in the years of conflict that followed had been shot and tortured. He was eventually granted refugee status in the UK but “the damage had been done” and he was a “very, very ill young man”. Judge Michael Topolski KC handed Fanta a hospital order without limit of time.