A man has been detained in hospital indefinitely for the “senseless” killing of an elderly mobility scooter rider five days after his release from prison.
Lee Byer stabbed 87-year-old Thomas O’Halloran in the neck and chest in Greenford, west London, in August 2022.
He later wrote repeatedly about a “Hunger Games” scenario in which he was required to meet “contestants” and then fight or attack, the Old Bailey was told.
Five days before the killing, Byer, who had a string of convictions, was released from Wormwood Scrubs prison after serving a full 12-year sentence for robbery.
The prosecutor Gareth Patterson KC told the court: “Technically, he was on bail when he was released in August 2022, so these offences were committed while on bail. Some months later that allegation was discontinued.
“From accounts from his mother and brother, there was odd behaviour but at that stage the full nature and degree of his mental illness had not been diagnosed.”
The 45-year-old, of no fixed address, denied murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter by diminished responsibility and having an offensive weapon.
The pleas were accepted by the prosecution after mental health reports found Byer was psychotic, hearing voices, suffering from paranoid delusions and paranoid schizophrenia.
In a televised sentencing on Friday, Judge Lucraft KC handed him a hospital order with restrictions. The judge said it was a “senseless” and “savage” killing of a “much-loved” man with “no provocation and no rational motive”.
He noted concerns over Byer’s mental health were raised in 2020 when there were reports he was hearing voices and tried to take his own life.
O’Halloran’s grandson Dennis Lintern condemned Byer for his “horrendous act of cowardice”. Lintern described his grandfather as a “gentle, loving man who spent his life working and helping everyone he could”.
He said: “He was minding his own business doing what he loved, playing his accordion to make people smile and enjoy his music which he had done for many years.”
In mitigation, Satyanand Beharrylal KC said Byer displayed a “questionable reality” when he wrote his defence statement in 2023 referencing the Hollywood series about a violent dystopia. Since then, he had expressed “regret” for what happened and “apologises for it”, the defence lawyer said.