Man guilty of murdering ‘total stranger’ in park

The emergency services here have dropped the ball here. A man clearly having a psychotic episode (or as comments are pointing out, some kind non-psychotic, violent episode), self-reported that he was having both homicidal and suicidal thoughts before anything bad had happened. They then essentially said he was fine, refused to admit him to hospital, and a woman is now dead.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Coronial inquest.

It seems, based on just the article at least, the Police have acted appropriately in taking the defendant to hospital. People can and do present to the Police on a regular basis stating thoughts of harming themselves or others. There is nothing I can see to suggest that a substantive offence has been committed that would require that the defendant be arrested.

Was the decision by the hospital the right one? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but an assumption can be made that the hospital have made an appropriate decision based on the information available to them at the time. This is backed up by the fact the defendant was convicted of murder rather than manslaughter.

I wonder if a prevention of future deaths report will come out of this one, because interaction with both Police and health was unable to prevent this poor ladies death.