Exmouth mental patient jailed for life for woman's murder

Cameron Davis attacked 74-year-old Lorna England in the Ludwell Valley Park in Exeter on February 18 last year and stabbed her in the neck and chest.

Lorna England  (Image: Supplied by family)

Davis tried to cover up the murder by throwing the knife in a stream and dumping his bloodstained hoodie in undergrowth, but the attack had been witnessed by a dog walker and police were able to identify and arrest him within hours.

He tried to blame the NHS for his crime because he had been assessed by a mental health practitioner at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital three hours earlier and discharged rather than admitted to the Wonford House hospital, which was full at the time.

Davis had warned staff that he might kill a stranger, but also accepted that he was in control of his thoughts and actions, and was warned that anything he did would be considered as pre-meditated. Health workers tried to alert the police but used the 101 number rather than 999, were put on hold for two hours, and then cut off without being answered.

 When he was arrested later that night in Exeter City Centre he told police: “I warned you. Why didn’t they listen to me at hospital? The people at hospital should pay for this. I cried out for help.”

The scene cordoned off by police. (Image: Devon and Cornwall Police)

The court heard that Davis’s claim that he received no help from the NHS and the local authority was not true. He had regular contact with the community team in Exmouth, where housing officers had moved him to a guest house after he set light to his flat in Blackmore Court.

He was about to be evicted from the Rohaven Guest house for threatening a housing officer, and on the morning of the killing had rung the police to say he planned to firebomb the building. The police called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital.

Davis, aged 31, of Exeter Road, Exmouth, denied murder but was found guilty on Tuesday when the jury rejected the defence of diminished responsibility.

He was jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years by Mrs Justice Stacey, who described him as ‘attention-seeking and manipulative’, and exonerated the NHS, police and East Devon housing department from any responsibility for the killing.

She praised the dignity of Lorna’s family and paid glowing tribute to her role as a wife, mother, grandmother and older sibling. She said the entire family had been overwhelmed by their loss.

She told Davis: “This was a planned and pre-meditated attack. It was the terrible fate of Lorna to be walking through that park at that time.

“We know that she fought back valiantly and prevented you stabbing her through the neck but you stabbed her thought the heart with sufficient force to cut through her winter clothes, through her body and into her spine.

 “You chose to commit this shocking act to punish the hospital, the mental health services and the police and all the people who tried to support you. You did so in anger because you didn’t get what you wanted.

“It is a feature of your personality disorder to blame others and society and seek to shift responsibility for your own acts. You were responsible for Lorna’s death and no-one else.

“You planned to kill someone when you were angry and did not get your way and were not admitted to the RD&E. The decision not to admit you was not based on resources. If a decision had been made to admit you, a bed would have been found.

 “This is not a case in which society has been failed by the police or public services. Only you knew if you would carry out your threats when you had made many similar empty threats in the past.

 “It is just wrong to say that appropriate help for you was not forthcoming. The culpability rests solely with the person who took out the knife that day. This was attention-seeking and controlling behaviour.”

The family of Lorna England have issued a tribute to her and described their overwhelming grief at her loss: read it here.