Woman in her 30s pleaded guilty to killing an 88-year-old church warden and stabbing three other shoppers in a crazy knife attack in a crowded supermarket.
Woman went on a murder spree
Zara Anne Radcliffe, a 30-year-old mother of one, stabbed John Rees in the face inside a Co-op shop while his 87-year-old wife Eunice, who has dementia, waited in their car in the village of Peygraig in Rhondda, South Wales, in May 2020.
In a frenzied attack, Radcliffe also stabbed a 53-year-old nurse, Lisa Way, a 58-year-old shopper, Andrew Price, and fellow nurse, 65-year-old Gaynor Saurin, according to Mirror UK.
Rees died from severe blunt trauma to the face, including multiple facial fractures. The other three victims of the knife attack survived.
Radcliff is said to have schizophrenia, and she is a single mother to a young son. She was a patient at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital for five months, and she came out at the start of the lockdown, according to The Sun.
Also Read: French Teacher Gets Beheaded for Cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in Class
Radcliffe broke up with her boyfriend weeks leading up to the attack. She also believed that the police were not taking her seriously after she reported an alleged assault against her.
On October 19, she pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Rees by reason of diminished responsibility. She had denied murder. She also admitted the attempted murders of Price, Saurin, and Way, who were all injured in the incident. She is currently held in the Rampton hospital.
The suspect's illness
The prosecutor, Michael Jones QC, told the court that the pleas were accepted by the Crown as at the time of the incident, the woman was suffering from schizophrenia. Rees, a retired senior engineer, lived with his wife Eunice at their home in Trealaw.
Rees was a church warden, and he was described as the definition of a good man, extremely respected and liked in the community by his family. His family paid tribute to him, saying that he would do anything for anyone, and was going to help the other victims of the stabbing attack when he died.
Michael Smith, the nephew of Rees, reacted to the news with absolute disbelief when he heard how Rees was killed on the shopping trip. He said it was upsetting, and he thought about his aunt, who is frail, and how she depended on him.
Rees was 88 years old, but he was physically fit, and he would often take his wife out to Pontypridd, and they would sit on the Prince's Cafe, according to Independent.Co.
Radcliff will be sentenced on October 21 at Merthyr Crown Court. Her cousin, Donna Evans, said that she knew she has some mental health problems, and she said she was hearing voices. She said Radcliffe talked to her about how the police were not taking her seriously.
Evans asked her about what she was talking about, but she said that Radcliff was not making sense. The suspect is said to have put strange things on Facebook.
A relative said in the hours before the incident that the suspect had called police to ask about a complaint she had made over an assault but got nothing. Police are now examining CCTV footage from the Co-op.
Related Article: 13-year-old Boy Dies After Fatal Shooting While Mowing the Lawn
