A detainee was choked to death by his fellow prisoner, who had fostered the 'silly conviction that he was a pedophile'. As he slept, Michael Harkin used a TV aerial cord to kill Dan Childs, BirminghamLive reports.
The 38-year-old was then tucked into his bunk bed by Harkin, who had been recalled to HMP Bristol just 24 hours earlier for violating his license. The following morning, Mr. Childs, who was originally from Telford, was found dead.
Mr. Childs told another inmate prior to his death that Harkin had threatened to kill him if he fell asleep. He had stated, He tells me that if I go to sleep, he will suffocate me, so my cellmate won't let me sleep.
Harkin "walked out as if nothing had happened" when the cell was opened the following morning, according to Bristol Crown Court, before slashing his former cellmate in the showers with an improvised blade. The second victim, according to the court, had only been in Harkin's cell for one night before demanding that he be moved due to concerns that "there was something not right" about him.
Psychiatrists had concluded that Harkin was suffering from schizophrenia and had developed religious delusions, as the court heard. A jury that had cleared him of murder on the judge's instruction found him guilty of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
In addition, Harkin was found guilty of injuring the other inmate, but he was not found guilty of a separate charge of attempting to injure a member of the prison staff who tried to intervene. Mr. Justice Bryan issued a hospital order under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act and a restriction order under Section 41, allowing Harkin to be detained indefinitely.
He was told by the judge: You have been detained in Broadmoor Hospital, where it is common knowledge that you will need to remain for treatment for the foreseeable future, and I must now sentence you in light of the verdicts returned by the jury. In addition, I must consider the fact that you remain profoundly mentally ill. Broadmoor Hospital is where you have been and remain detained. Your treating specialist criminological therapist in Broadmoor can't predict when it would be suitable or alright for you to be gotten back to the jail framework."
The judge went on to describe the assault on Mr. Childs that occurred on June 4 of last year. He stated, "You killed him at some point by strangling him with the coaxial cord from the cell TV."
“As there is no physical evidence of a struggle, it appears from the pathology evidence that you may have strangled him while he was asleep. It seems you then 'tucked him up' in his sheets on the top bunk.
“You walked out of the cell as if nothing had happened when the cell was opened in the morning, and CCTV on the landing shows you interacting with others and walking around the landing without anyone noticing that Mr. Childs was dead in his cell. Regarding the reason you killed Mr. Childs, it appears that the fact that he had the name "child" in his name led you to the delusional belief that he was a paedophile, which was completely false and had no basis in fact.
Portraying the resulting shower assault, the adjudicator said: " You repeatedly slashed him with the weapon, cutting deep cuts that have left him permanently scarred on his left shoulder and neck. He had bled out when he thought he was going to die, as he probably would have if no one intervened. Another prisoner heard his screams and tried to stop you with a long-handled mop.
