A mother who stabbed to death a man she had just befriended was jailed for five years today, a UK court official said.
Sabina Eriksson, 41, who is originally from Sweden but had lived in County Cork for several years before the attack, killed Glenn Hollinshead, 54, after he had invited her to stay at his house in Stoke-on-Trent when she had nowhere to sleep.
The mother of two, who spent several years living in Mallow with her two young children, befriended Mr Hollinshead when he was walking home from a pub on 29 May 2008.
She stayed at his house that night and the following evening stabbed him four times when he was apparently about to make a cup of tea.
Afterwards she made off with a hammer, with which witnesses saw her hitting herself on the head before she jumped 40ft from a bridge on to the A50.
She pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Nottingham Crown Court on 2 September.
Psychiatrists told Luton Crown Court yesterday she was suffering from a rare psychiatric illness at the time of the incident - either induced delusional disorder or acute polymorphic disorder.
Induced delusional disorder is where delusions are passed from one person to another, while acute polymorphic disorder is a psychotic condition.
It is thought to be the first time Eriksson had suffered any mental illness.
Sentencing at the court today, judge Mr Justice Saunders said: ‘Her culpability for her behaviour is, on the medical evidence...low. She was suffering from delusions which she believed to be true and they dictated her behaviour.’
The sentence was not designed to reflect the grief of Mr Hollinshead's relatives but to protect the public, he said.
‘I understand that this sentence will seem entirely inadequate to the relatives of the deceased,’ he said.
‘However I have sentenced on the basis that the reason for the killing was the mental illness and therefore the culpability of the defendant is low and therefore the sentence I have passed is designed to protect the public.
‘It is not designed to reflect the grief the relatives have suffered or to measure the value of Mr Hollinshead's life.
‘No sentence that I could pass could do that. It is a sentence which I hope fairly measures a truly tragic event.’
Psychiatrists who examined Eriksson concluded that the risk of her having a relapse was low.
Eriksson killed Mr Hollinshead a day after she was released from custody, where she had been detained for assaulting a police officer.
She punched a female police officer who tried to stop her running across the M6 near Keele services on 17 May 2008.
The incident happened when Eriksson and her twin sister Ursula were travelling from Liverpool to London Victoria on a National Express coach, a day after leaving their home in Ireland.
When the coach stopped at Keele Services to change drivers they disembarked and ran on to the carriageway.
Eriksson was knocked into the air by a Volkswagen Polo car and lost consciousness for a few minutes.
When she came around, she got up to run across the carriageway again and when a police officer tried to stop her, she punched her.
The court was shown video footage of the incident, in which Eriksson is heard screaming ‘Call the police’ as officers try and restrain her.
She appeared before magistrates in Fenton, Staffordshire, and was sentenced to one day in prison for assaulting the police officer and putting other road users in danger but was released immediately as she had already spent an equivalent time in custody.
