Family of man killed by psychiatric patient say they’ve been ‘treated like dirt’ after learning attacker can leave hospital
The family of a dog walker killed by a psychiatric patient say they have been ‘treated like dirt’ by the NHS after learning his attacker has been granted permission to leave hospital.
Lewis Stone was stabbed to death by David Fleet in a random attack in Borth, Wales, in 2019, shortly after Mr Fleet had been released into the community.
Mr Stone’s family were informed of the update to his care just hours after Sky News aired their first TV interview calling for an internal NHS Trust report into its handling of Fleet’s case to be released.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
From 10 April: Victim’s family demand answers over killer’s NHS care
Mr Stone’s stepdaughter, Vicki Lindsay, told Sky News: “As victims, we have been treated disgracefully.
“We still do not know why the killer was released 10 days before he attacked Lewis, who made that decision and why, and who is going to be held accountable for it.
“But as if all that were not bad enough, only six years on, we now get to live knowing that the killer is now allowed out at night time.”
Ms Lindsay also told Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee that “my biggest fear is that it’s going to happen again – I can’t sleep at night thinking about other families going through what we’ve gone through”.
Mr Fleet was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after admitting manslaughter with diminished responsibility.
He was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the attack and told psychiatrists that if he had not stabbed Mr Stone, the voices in his head “were going to kill him”.
Lewis Stone was fatally stabbed in February 2019
Patients who have committed a mental health-related homicide can be granted permission to leave their hospital under Section 17 of the Mental Health Act.
It is considered part of the patient’s rehabilitation and preparation for eventual discharge.
What has the MoJ said?
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We understand this decision will be difficult for the Stone family, and our thoughts are with them.
“Any decision to approve access to the community is only made after a thorough risk assessment and with strict safeguards in place.”
Lewis Stone with his granddaughter Sammy
The Hywel Dda health board says it does not intend to release an internal report into Fleet’s care.
Sharon Daniel, the interim executive director for nursing, quality and patient experience, said: “The duty of candour for patients came into force in Wales in April 2023.
“At the time of this incident and concern, we fulfilled our duties to be open.”
A senior NHS official has called the decision not to release the internal report “callous and uncaring”. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said: “On the face of it, this family has been failed multiple times over.
“Of course, there is a balance to be struck between the rights of the family and the rights of the person detained, but the basic lack of transparency and consideration here undermines the duty of candour.”
Freedom of Information requests made by the victim’s support organisation Hundred Families have found that nearly 400 people were killed by former mental health patients between 2018 and 2023.
However, this number is expected to be a significant underestimate as a quarter of NHS Mental Health Trusts refused to say how many of their patients went on to kill, as they don’t want to risk identifying offenders.
Read more from Sky News:
Van driver ‘took 20 lines of coke’ before killing toddler in crash
Open water events without regulation ‘risk future deaths’, warns coroner
Julian Hendy, who founded Hundred Families, said: “Unfortunately the family of Lewis Stone is not alone. There is a terrible lack of openness and transparency and that needs to change.
“The public needs to know that mental health services are keeping people safe and learning effectively when things go wrong.
“At the moment, by failing to share information the public cannot be reassured.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
Read more:
G7 summit ‘all about the Donald’ – analysis
Scrambled G7 agenda as leaders race to de-escalate Israel-Iran conflict
In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike