A COVENTRY man who stabbed his pensioner mother to death in a row over a cup of tea is ‘on a rollercoaster of getting better and getting worse.’
Thomas Westwood had pleaded not guilty to the murder of his 68-year-old mother Susan, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
That plea was accepted by the prosecution, and Westwood (47) of Rosemary Crescent, Tile Hill, Coventry, had been due to be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court as long ago as August last year.
But at that hearing prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith said that two psychiatrists who had seen Westwood, Dr Leela Sivaprasad and Dr Nicholas Kennedy, agreed that a transfer to a secure unit was required for him to be further assessed.
Mr Grieves-Smith pointed out that required an interim hospital order to be made under the Mental Health Act, supported by reports from two psychiatrists, one of whom, in Westwood’s case Dr Sivaprasad, would be caring for him.
The court heard Westwood had ‘a history of psychiatric problems going back many, many years,’ and was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time.
His mother had been found at her home in Cavendish Road, Tile Hill, Coventry, at 8.45 in the evening on Friday December 1, 2017, suffering from stab wounds.
Paramedics fought to save her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene, having been stabbed some 17 times.
When he was arrested, Westwood claimed she bullied him, and said they had argued after he had made her a cup of tea which she had complained was not milky enough.
Judge Andrew Lockhart QC commented: “An interim order is rare, but where would I go without it? This is a case where there could be all manner of disposals.”
He observed that those could range from a life sentence or a determinate prison sentence to a hospital order, with or without a restriction on Westwood’s eventual release.
So he made the interim hospital order, initially for a 12-week period, under which Westwood was detained at the Reaside secure psychiatric unit in Rubery, Birmingham.
But there have since been further hearings at which the assessment period had been extended.
At the latest hearing, Judge Lockhart commented: “We are on a rollercoaster of him getting better and getting worse.
“We need closure for the sake of the family of the deceased, who are also the family of the defendants.”
But agreeing to a further 28-day extension of the interim order, he said: “Whatever type of sentence is passed, all are driven by the findings of these doctors. A great deal of work has been done, but more is to be done.”
