A teenage boy who stabbed a girl in the back after sending a message saying “I die or she dies” has been detained under the Mental Health Act. Following the knife attack the boy messaged his victim and told her not to say anything or he would kill her.
The 15-year-old boy attempted to murder the girl during a serious assault at Cadoxton railway station in Barry on January 27 last year. The defendant was the boyfriend of a female whom the victim “did not get on with” and who had previously asked the victim for a fight.
A trial at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court previously heard the boy met with the victim in an alley near the station in order to purchase vapes, but he was in a “highly agitated state”. The court heard “the deal was done” and a vape was sold but as the victim was walking away the defendant approached her from behind and “without saying anything stabbed her in the back” before running off.
Prosecutor Alex Greenwood said a “scene of pandemonium” then ensued and emergency services were called. Police were quickly at the station and an officer applied pressure to a wound in the girl’s back before she was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. Medics found a 4cm-long stab wound to the right flank/back and a displaced right kidney. The injured girl spent a total of a week in hospital. Mr Greenwood said following the incident the defendant sent the girl a text saying: “Say something and you are dead.”
The jury was told of text conversations between the defendant and his girlfriend before the incident in which he told her what he planned to do and his girlfriend urged him not to do it. His girlfriend said: “So you just going to kill [her] is that your plan?”
The defendant replied: “I die or [she] dies. I don’t care any more. This is what I do.” The court heard in one message the defendant told his girlfriend: “I love you so much and you make me so happy.”
The boy, from Cardiff, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged with attempted murder, possession of a bladed article in a public place, and perverting the course of justice. He was deemed unfit to stand trial so instead the jury had to decide whether he committed those acts rather than determine guilt or innocence. On the second day of their deliberations, they returned verdicts that they were sure he had done the alleged acts.
At a mention hearing at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Jeremy Jenkins made the defendant subject of a Section 47 restriction order under the Mental Health Act. He will be detained in hospital indefinitely until a further order is made.
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