A BELFAST man who repeatedly stabbed a lorry driver after voices from his TV told him he was delivering dead bodies to his street, is to be detained indefinitely.
The 27-year-old man, who has been in and out of mental health care for nearly seven years, was acquitted by a Belfast Crown Court jury earlier this week of attempting to murder the delivery driver, "by reason of insanity".
Today Judge David McFarland said that having read and heard oral evidence from two leading psychiatrists, he was of the view it would be appropriate to make a "hospital order" and given the clinical view of the man's mental condition, "that order will be without time limit".
The Belfast Recorder said the man would remain under the care of the Belfast health trust at Knockbracken Healthcare Park.
Earlier Dr Richard Bunn, who has been treating the man at the east Belfast care centre, said the order was needed to protect the public from serious harm as the man's paranoid schizophrenia would remain a "life long condition".
Although his condition, at the time of the knife attack on September 26, 2016, was being regulated by medication, the man had also been drinking and taking the legal highs.
The man was to tell another leading psychiatrist that, while he thought the legal high helped him concentrate, he also "accepted he began seeing things after prolonged use".
After the knife attack on the lorry driver, who was repeatedly stabbed, the man also told doctors it was up to him to "protect" his neighbours from the driver who he believed was delivering dead bodies to their street and if he failed he would be held responsible.
When interviewed he said he had been watching TV when he looked out the window and saw the delivery driver and: "Something was telling me that he was burying dead bodies".
The court also heard that the man suggested that he was "set up" by people from the sci-fi series Stargate Atlantis who had the technology to interact with him, and tell him to do things.
