‘I was sleepwalking’: Can you kill someone while you’re asleep?
“I was sleepwalking,” a public schoolboy, wearing only his boxing shorts, was heard to say after brutally attacking two fellow students and a housemaster.
Henry Roffe-Silvester, a teacher at the exclusive boarding school, was awoken in the middle of the night by footsteps coming from the dormitory directly above.
He went to investigate, and as he opened the door to the pitch-dark room, he saw a silhouetted figure who turned and struck him on the head with a hammer.
“I stumbled backwards into the corridor,” said Mr Roffe-Silvester, during his attacker’s two-month trial. “There was a second blow – I can’t remember if it was before I stumbled back – that’s a little bit hazy for me.”
He suffered six blows to the head before managing to get the weapon off the boy he now recognised as one of his students, who “slumped down” in a squat position and was heard to say: “I was dreaming.”
When paramedics arrived at Blundell’s School in Taunton, Devon, they found “carnage” like “a scene from a horror film” with blood over the desks, the walls and the cabin-style beds.
There was no question the boy, then 16, caused the “awful injuries” to the housemaster and two sleeping dorm-mates – both boys suffered skull fractures, as well as injuries to their ribs, spleen, a punctured lung and internal bleeding.
Scene was ‘like horror film’
‘Zombie apocalypse’
He told a jury at Exeter Crown Court he kept hammers by his bed for “protection” from “the zombie apocalypse” or the end of the world.
He remembered going to sleep on 8 June last year, he said, and the next thing he recalled was being in the room which was “covered in blood”.
“I knew something really bad had gone on and everyone was looking towards me,” he said.
“I didn’t remember doing anything so the only rational thing I was thinking was that I was sleepwalking.”
Prosecutors said he had armed himself with three claw hammers, then waited for his victims to fall asleep before attacking them.
But his barrister, Kerim Fuad KC, said he must have been “sleepwalking to have committed these extraordinary acts” – meaning he would be not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity.
The history of the sleepwalking defence
The idea that acts of violence can be committed by people who are sleepwalking isn’t new – since the 14th century, the Catholic Church recognised the idea that a sleeper shouldn’t be held responsible for killing or injuring someone.
The first English case is believed to be the Old Bailey trial of Colonel Culpeper in 1686, who was said to have shot a guardsman and his horse during a dream. He was convicted of manslaughter while insane but pardoned a few weeks later.
More incidents came to light in the Victorian era as scientists began studying the mind, among them the famous case of Simon Fraser, a known sleepwalker, from Glasgow.
Believing he was saving his family from a wild beast that had burst through the floorboards, he killed his 18-month-old son by throwing him against a wall. He was cleared but was told by the judge to sleep alone in a locked room for the rest of his life.
Jules Lowe was cleared of murdering his father. Pic: PA
More recently, in 2005 Jules Lowe was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and made the subject of a hospital order after claiming he was sleepwalking when he beat his father to death at the family home in Walkden, Greater Manchester, after a drinking session.
Three years later, father-of-two Brian Thomas strangled his wife Christine while they were on holiday in west Wales, believing an intruder had broken into their campervan.
The nightmare was suggested to have been triggered by an earlier incident when they were disturbed by youths doing wheel spins in the car park.
Thomas was described as a “decent man and a devoted husband” by the judge after being cleared of murder when prosecutors dropped the case.
The sleepwalking defence is rare – according to sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley, who was not involved in the Blundell’s case, and tells Sky News it has been successfully used just 200 times in the English-speaking world.
Sexsomnia
But it has become increasingly common over last 30 years, says Dr John Rumbold, a lecturer at the Nottingham Law School, who tells Sky News there is a growing number of sleep experts and a greater awareness among lawyers.
In the past, reported cases more commonly involved violence, he says, but now around 80% to 90% of cases involve sexsomnia, an extreme variant of sleepwalking, that can cause people to engage in sexual activity while unconscious.
“Very often it’s drunk young men” who are accused of rape or other sex offences, he says. “They don’t really have any other defence and it’s fairly complex actions.”
Dr Stanley believes that some people who are guilty have successfully used the defence in the past and says there is a lack of knowledge of the subject among judges, lawyers and juries.
He says that in theory he could use his expertise to tell someone how to behave and what to say to convince a court they were a genuine sleepwalker.
‘Get out of jail free card’
Some see it as “a get out of jail free card”, he says, but he adds that “people, in their sleep, can kill, they can rape, they can assault – sexually or physically”.
Barrister Ramya Nagesh, who has written a book on sleepwalking and other automatism defences tells Sky News that just because it is being used more “that doesn’t mean that it’s being used in bad faith because you do have to have expert opinion”.
She thinks there should be a change in the law to allow a verdict of not guilty by virtue of a medical condition to encompass cases involving sleepwalking, epileptic fits and hypoglycaemia.
“Automatism is an outright acquittal – it feels a bit odd to say we’ll excuse them, but they might go off and do it again,” she says.
“They don’t deserve to go to prison and wouldn’t benefit from a hospital order, so it would give judges a bit more power.”
Blundell’s school, Tiverton, Devon
The public schoolboy, now 17, who can’t be identified because of his age, has been found guilty of three counts of attempted murder after a jury deliberated for 40 hours and he will be sentenced in October.
His relatives told the jury there was a history of sleepwalking in the family and he said his mother had found him at the bottom of a staircase in their home around a decade ago.
A ‘textbook example’?
After the attacks, the teenager told a student he was watching horror movies, while others heard him say: “I am sorry, I was dreaming.”
At his trial, sleep forensic expert, Dr Mark Pressman, who has decades of experience in the field, has seen 20,000 patients and more than 100 cases of sleepwalking violence, was called as a witness.
He described the case in court as a “textbook example”, explaining sleepwalkers could be fearful for their lives and “respond with violence to protect themselves at a very primitive level”.
“The defendant swivelled around and attacked his housemaster without knowing who he was,” he said. He was not aware he had attacked the housemaster.”
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But another expert witness, Dr John O’Reilly, told the court he did not believe the boy was asleep as a sleepwalker does not initiate violence because it is triggered by noise or touch.
Prosecutors said he had been awake shortly before the attacks, with an examination of his iPad showing he had been listening to music on Spotify, and that he had a fascination with serial killers.
‘Lucky to still be alive’
In his room, he kept a locked stash of what other pupils described as “weapons”, including shards of broken glass, screwdrivers and multiple hammers.
Police discovered he had carried out internet searches for “rampage killers”, “school massacres”, “murder with a hammer” and “killer kills while sleeping”.
He had sent alarming messages to one of his victims in the months before the attack – including a character from the horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre wielding a hammer.
“These violent actions were repeated again and again,” said prosecutor James Dawes KC, and there was “no other explanation for his actions other than his intention to kill them”.
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Following his conviction, senior crown prosecutor Helen Phillips said the two boys were “lucky to still be alive”.
“The boy, who had a macabre interest in murder, serial killers, and violence, showed no remorse and naïvely thought that by concocting a story about sleepwalking at the time of the attack he could evade punishment,” she added.
Ramesh lives in fear every day. A police siren is enough to alarm him.
He’s one of up to 400,000 visa overstayers in the UK, one lawyer we spoke to believes.
It’s only an estimate because the Home Office has stopped collecting figures – which were unreliable in the first place.
Britain is being laughed at, one man told us, “because they know it’s a soft country”.
‘Ramesh’ came to the UK from India
We meet Ramesh (not his real name) at a Gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, where he goes for food and support.
He insists he can’t return to India where he claims he was involved in political activism.
Ramesh says he came to the UK on a student visa in 2023, but it was cancelled when he failed to continue his studies after being involved in a serious accident.
He tells us he is doing cash-in-hand work for people who he knows through the community where he is living and is currently working on a house extension where he gets paid as little as £50 for nine hours labouring.
“It’s very difficult for me to live in the UK without my Indian or Pakistani community – also because there are a lot of Pakistani people who give me work in their houses for cleaning and for household things,” he adds.
‘What will become of people like us?’
Anike has lived in limbo for 12 years.
Now living in Greater Manchester, she came to the UK from Nigeria when her sister Esther was diagnosed with a brain tumour – she had a multi-entry visa but was supposed to leave after three months.
Esther had serious complications from brain surgery and says she is reliant on her sister for care.
Immigration officials are in touch with her because she has to digitally sign in every month.
Anike has had seven failed applications for leave to remain on compassionate grounds refused but is now desperate to have her status settled – afraid of the shifting public mood over migration.
“Everybody is thinking ‘what will become of people like us?'” she adds.
‘It’s a shambles’
The government can’t say with any degree of accuracy how many visa overstayers there are in Britain – no data has been collated for five-and-a-half years.
But piecing together multiple accounts from community leaders and lawyers the picture we’ve built is stark.
Immigration lawyer Harjap Singh Bhangal told us he believed there could be several hundred thousand visa overstayers currently in Britain.
He says: “At this time, there’s definitely in excess of about 200,000 people overstaying in the UK. It might even be closer to 300,000, it could even be 400,000.”
Asked what evidence he has for this he replies: “Every day I see at least one overstayer, any immigration lawyers like me see overstayers and that is the bulk of the work for immigration lawyers.
“The Home Office doesn’t have any accurate data because we don’t have exit controls. It’s a shambles. It’s an institution where every wall in the building is cracked.”
The number of those who are overstaying visas and working cash in hand is also virtually impossible to measure.
‘They know Britain is a soft country’
“They’re laughing at us because they know Britain is a soft country, where you won’t be picked up easily,” says the local man we’ve arranged to meet as part of our investigation.
We’re in Kingsbury in northwest London – an area which people say has been transformed over the past five years as post-Brexit visa opportunities opened up for people coming from South Asia.
‘Mini-Mumbai’
The man we’re talking to lives in the community and helps with events here. He doesn’t want to be identified but raises serious questions about visa abuse.
“Since the last five years, a huge amount of people have come in this country on this visiting visa, and they come with one thing in mind – to overstay and work in cash,” he says.
“This area is easy to live in because they know they can survive. It looks like as if you are walking through mini-Mumbai.”
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‘The system is more than broken’
‘It’s taxpayers who are paying’
And he claims economic migrants are regularly arriving – who’ve paid strangers to pretend they’re a friend or relative in order to obtain a visitor visa to get to Britain.
He says: “I’ve come across so many people who have come this way into this country. It’s widespread. When I talk to these people, they literally tell me, ‘Oh, someone is coming tomorrow, day after tomorrow, someone is coming’.
“Because they’re hidden they may not be claiming benefits, but they can access emergency healthcare and their children can go to school.
“And who is paying for it? It’s the taxpayers who are paying for all this,” says the man we’ve met in north London.
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A Home Office spokesperson said: “We will not tolerate any abuse of our immigration system and anyone found to be breaking the rules will be liable to have enforcement action taken against them.
“In the first year of this government, we have returned 35,000 people with no right to be here – a 13% rise compared to the previous year.
“Arrests and raids for illegal working have soared to their highest levels since records began, up 63% and 51%.”
The government can’t say with accuracy how many visa overstayers there are in Britain – no data has been collated for five-and-a-half years.
Sky News has spoken to immigration lawyers about the numbers, and one believes there could be as many as 400,000 living across the country.
Harjap Singh Bhangal described the situation as a “shambles”.
“The Home Office doesn’t have any accurate data because we don’t have exit controls. It’s a shambles. It’s an institution where every wall in the building is cracked,” he told Sky’s Lisa Holland.
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The visa overstayers in ‘soft’ Britain
Why doesn’t the government know?
The Home Office used to gather data on visa overstayers by effectively checking a list of passport numbers associated with visas against a list of passport numbers of people leaving the UK, taken from airlines and other international travel providers.
If there was a passport number match in the arrivals and departures part of their database, that person was recorded to have left when they should have. If there wasn’t, they were a potential overstayer.
They stopped producing the figures because a combination of Brexit and COVID added complications that made the Home Office conclude they wouldn’t be able to get to a reliable number using the same method.
It’s now four and a half years since EU citizens had freedom of movement to the UK revoked, and more than three and a half years since pandemic-era travel restrictions ended.
And yet we are still waiting to see what a new method might look like.
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The old method wasn’t perfect. If someone changed their passport while in the UK, for example, or if the airline or individual entered the number wrong when they were leaving, there wouldn’t be a match.
The Home Office regarded the statistics as likely overestimating the true number of overstayers, and the Office for National Statistics designated the figures as “experimental” rather than “official” statistics, meaning the conclusions should be treated with caution. But they were a reasonable best guess.
With all that in mind, between April 2016 and March 2020 upwards of 250,000 people were flagged as potential overstayers, equivalent to 63,000 per year.
That’s more than the 190,000 people who are recorded to have arrived in the UK on small boats since 2018.
It represents 3.5% of the seven million visas that expired over that period, so at least 96.5% of people left when they should.
Other Home Office data reveals that more than 13 million visas were issued between 2020 and the end of June 2025, including a record 3.4 million in 2023.
But what we don’t know is how many have expired, which means it’s difficult for us to even guess how many people might have overstayed.
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