Mentally ill woman on trial for carrying murderous attack on two woman after she was allowed to go without being sectioned

duncan12
January 9, 2013

Nicola Edgington, 32, who carried out two murderous blade attacks on two strangers, was allowed to walk out of the hospital just hours earlier after demanding to be sectioned and warning she could kill somebody the court heard. Just after she was allowed to leave the mentally ill woman had stabbed a grandmother to death in the street.

The Old Bailey heard how Edgington was freed from a three year period of detention in a secure psychiatric unit for killing her own mother.

One of her victims who were attacked with a butcher’s knife was almost decapitated and the other woman barely managed to escape after wrestling the weapon off her in a desperate struggle on the ground.

Early on the day of the attacks in November 2011, Edgington had voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric unit at the QueenElizabethHospital in Woolwich, south-east London, where she told a nurse that she had not slept for three weeks and needed to be sectioned.

While on wait at the medical center to be seen by the staff she made a series of calls to 999 and other numbers in which she said she was a very dangerous schizophrenic’ and feared that she could hurt somebody if she did not receive help.

Prosecuting Mark Heywood QC, having suffered nervous breakdown in the past she had said that she was scared she was dangerous and was worried that she might kill someone.

Blaming the hospital staff for the stabbing she had told the police that they were just tapping on keyboards even though she had told them that she was going to hurt someone.

Before Edgington could be admitted to the psychiatric unit as a voluntary in-patient, she walked out of the hospital and took a bus to a shopping centre in Bexleyheath in south-east London bought a 12 inch knife and used it to attack Miss Kerry Clark who grappled with the attacker and managed to grab the weapon. After the attack she walked away and stole a butcher’s knife she ran down the road and came upon Sally Hodking, 58, a law accounts manager going to her work. Edgington attacked her repeatedly in the head and neck with the knife the court was told.

Edgington stabbed her mother to death in November 2005 and was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act in October 2006 after pleading guilty to manslaughter, the jury was told.

However, in September 2009 she was allowed to leave the secure psychiatric facility and live in a supported flat in Greenwich, south-east London.

Edgington, of Flavell Mews, Greenwich, south-east London, admitted guilty only of Mrs Hodkin’s manslaughter and denies intending to kill Miss Clark.

However, the prosecution argues that she understood that what she was doing was legally and morally wrong, and so is guilty of murder and attempted murder.

The trial continues.