Mental patient freed to kill best friend he thought was the Devil
A JUDGE has demanded a probe after a troubled patient was able to leave a psychiatric unit days before brutally killing a friend he believed was the Devil.
David Reid had told family members and medics about his delusions that ‘demons’ were trying to harm him in the weeks before he stabbed Mark Johnston more than 120 times.
Despite the warnings, doctors at Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen – where Reid had been taken because there were no beds in Tayside – decided the 46year-old was not ill enough to be detained for urgent treatment.
Reid was acquitted of murder at the High Court in Livingston last week after the prosecution accepted he was ‘not criminally responsible for his actions by reason of mental disorder’.
The court heard Reid had told police: ‘I feel terrible.
‘The Devil told me I had two hours to stab him. I got a knife from the kitchen and sat there. He was my only friend.
‘I can’t believe what I’ve done. I stabbed him. What will his family think?’
Reid’s psychotic state at the time of the killing was confirmed in reports by psychiatrists.
Judge Lady Rae questioned how Reid, who has been detained in the State Hospital at Carstairs, Lanarkshire, was able to leave the unit, stating: ‘I expect some investigations to be done.’
She added: ‘I don’t want it to be implied that there is a criticism of the NHS but I’d have thought some inquiry should be made of what actually happened.
‘He had been taken there in a taxi accompanied by two members of staff so he was obviously sufficiently unwell that they required him to be accompanied.
‘There are concerns. It might be there was no failure or blame – there is no evidence for that – but there are concerns.’
Last night Scottish Conservative mental health spokesman Annie Wells said: ‘It’s bad enough that there was no capacity to keep him in one of Scotland’s major cities. But the fact he was then able to walk free from another in this way compounds the series of failings.
‘As a result, a man is dead and another now likely never to be released. An urgent review is needed to find out why these failings occurred and how they can be avoided in future.’
The court heard that, four days before the attack on October 20 last year, Reid told a psychiatric nurse in Dundee he was ‘receiving messages from God’ and the decision was taken to admit him to hospital.
Two NHS Tayside staff then escorted him in a taxi to Aberdeen because no psychiatric beds were available locally. He was admitted to NHS Grampian’s Royal Cornhill Hospital but soon afterwards he discharged himself, after a consultant decided he did not meet the criteria for compulsory treatment.
Less than 48 hours later he phoned his sister and said he had stabbed his friend to death in his flat in Broughty Ferry, Angus, after ‘shredding’ his jugular vein with a kitchen knife.
The court heard that the Anchor House homeless unit in Perth got a phone call from Reid’s sister, who had previously stayed there, stating that he had confessed to stabbing his friend ‘because he thought he was the Devil’.
NHS Grampian said: ‘We cannot comment on individual patients. However, we can confirm that adverse event reviews were carried out in this case.’
‘I stabbed him. What will his family think?’