Christina Edkins killing: man pleads guilty to stabbing schoolgirl on bus

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/02/christina-edkins-man-pleads-guilty

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A man with mental health issues has admitted stabbing a schoolgirl to death on a crowded bus as she travelled to school.

Phillip Simelane, 23, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 16-year-old Christina Edkins in a random attack as she sat on the top deck of the bus during the morning rush hour.

Simelane was sentenced to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act. Police said they considered it "highly unlikely" that he would ever be deemed fit to be freed.

Ordering Simelane to be detained in a secure psychiatric unit, Mrs Justice Thirlwall expressed concern that he had not been receiving treatment at the time of the killing.

Simelane admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Doctors recently diagnosed him as having paranoid schizophrenia and say he may have had the condition since he was 13.

It can be reported now that Simelane had been released unsupervised from prison despite warning signs about his mental health. The killing has led to questions about how he was dealt with after his release and a series of reviews have been launched.

Simelane boarded the number nine bus at 5am, and had been sleeping on the back seat. At one point he was confronted by the driver but told him he was cold, tired and homeless, and simply wanted somewhere to rest.

The driver had no idea he had a kitchen knife, which was between 10ins and 1ft long (25-30cm), hidden in a plastic bag.

Christina had been on the bus for five minutes when Simelane walked up to the girl, lunged into her and stabbed her before walking down the stairs and getting off the bus. The only other person on the top deck was a 14-year-old schoolboy who did not initially realise what had happened.

Christina was pronounced dead at 8am and police launched a huge manhunt.

Simelane, who was wearing a distinctive jacked with a tiger's head on the back, was arrested at noon when he returned to the scene of the killing and was spotted by officers.

Simelane had seven convictions for offences including possessing a knife, assault and criminal damage. From the age of 14 police had been called out by his mother 21 times when he worried her with his threatening behaviour or assaulted her or his siblings.

It also emerged after he was caught that a man matching his description had approached two girls on a bus in the area in the same month as the fatal attack.

Birmingham and Solihull mental health NHS foundation trust said lessons would be learned from the case. In a statement it said: "Phillip Simelane had previously been in receipt of care from a number of healthcare providers over a period of years. Our trust's involvement was in the form of prison-based mental health assessments during a prison term in 2012.

"What is clear, is that there are lessons to be learned for us and others involved in the care of Phillip Simelane to prevent such a tragedy happening again in the future.

"As a trust we are currently leading an external review, commissioned by Birmingham cross-city clinical commissioning gGroup, on behalf of all the parties involved and intend to report on our findings in December 2013."

Since the attack, Simelane has spent time in a secure unit where he has undergone psychiatric assessment.

At the time of her death, Christina's parents paid tribute to a "bubbly, beautiful and intelligent" teenager.

"Our world has been torn apart by the loss of our beautiful princess," said Jason and Kathleen Edkins. "It's hard to describe the pain we're all feeling. Her family and friends will remember her as an amazing individual with her whole life ahead of her, a life that was tragically cut short on that Thursday morning. Our lives will never be the same again."

They said Christina was studying hard for exams and looking forward to her school prom before she was killed. "We'd bought Christina's prom dress the week before and recall the day she tried it on; she looked like a princess. She was our princess," they said.

West Midlands police have previously described the attack as "horrific and random".

In 2012, Simelane served 101 days in prison for pointing a knife at his mother's stomach and threatening to stab her. During his arrest he punched a police officer.

He was out of prison for just seven days before being sent back in October 2012 after being found with cocaine and interfering with a vehicle.

But because the vehicle and drug offences listed on the indictment were classed as minor, there was no plan put in place to monitor Simelane after he left prison in December 2012. This was even though warning "markers" about potential mental health issues had been put on his police national computer file during his time in prison, flagging up concerns about suicide and self-harming, violence and weapons.

Superintendent Richard Baker, who initially led the murder investigation, said a number of reviews were continuing to determine what, if anything, could have been done to intervene in Simelane's case before he carried out his deadly attack.

Separate reviews are being completed by the police, the prison service and the Birmingham and Solihull mental health NHS foundation trust.

Baker said: "All the agencies in the management of Phillip Simelane are currently undergoing independent reviews to sort out what support he had."

Christina's great-uncle Chris Melia said Christina would still be alive if Simelane had been properly supervised, claiming instead that he had been allowed to drop off the radar of all the relevant agencies.

"As we understand it, it had been said by some mental health experts that he should receive some support and help or monitoring when back in the community and it just didn't happen," said Melia.

"The fact he had been identified as someone who needed help seems to have been totally lost. There apparently are some inquiries ongoing which will come up with information as to what happened and more importantly what should happen in future to prevent reoccurrence."

Simelane's lifestyle shortly before the killing has been difficult to establish, although it was known he was unemployed and sleeping rough. As a youngster he had emigrated from Swaziland to England with his mother and siblings, leaving his natural father behind.

The family moved to Walsall, and although he attended school he was not a regular in classes by the time he was 14, amid claims he was being bullied. He first came to the attention of the police aged 14.

His mother told police that at this time she saw a decline in her son's mental health. He became isolated, did not wash and rarely left his room.

He would not accept he had a problem. In recent years his mother had lived in fear of her son, and would refuse to come out of her house when he came around asking for money, instead "handing it to him through an open window".

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