Supermarket stabbing - Knifeman left Lucy for dead but his mum says he's no monster

Samuel Reid-Wentworth's mother, Angela, has said her son was starting to realise the enormity of his actions.

The paranoic schizophrenic (22) stabbed shopper Lucy Yates more than 20 times, resulting in serious wounds to her neck, face and abdomen.

A judge at Lewes Crown Court has ordered that he be kept indefinitely in Broadmoor mental hospital.

"Samuel is not a monster," Mrs Reid-Wentworth said. "That's the opposite of his true self. It's his illness that's the monster.

"He is very depressed. What is happening is that now he is normalising, he is starting to realise what he has done to another human being.

"Also, of course, he must be missing us.

"He used to visit his family most days."

Mrs Reid-Wentworth, who has three sons, continued: "This is something that could strike anybody or their family.

"There needs to be more public awareness that this is an illness that can bring about the opposite in character to a person's normal character.

"Ironically, throughout his life we and his friends knew Samuel as a gentle, thoughtful, conscientious and very caring individual.

"It is notable that Samuel carried out the attack in public, where he knew he would almost certainly be stopped, and that he has actually said he wanted to be caught."

She said her thoughts were also with the victim of Samuel's attack and her family.

"I should think anyone would realise how much we as a family deeply regret what happened and that a much loved family member could do such a terrible thing.

"It's very sad for everybody. There was this young girl innocently out doing her shopping.

"I realise the attack will affect her relationships and friendships and I wonder how much help she will need in the future," she added.

Mrs Reid-Wentworth, who is in her early 50s, and lives in the town centre, said she had been diagnosed as suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and now depression as a result of the attack by Samuel.

She firmly blamed bullying at his school, outside the Bognor area, for triggering his mental illness.

But she has also shown the Observer a large dossier of what she claims to be negligence by health care professionals responsible for caring for her son.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that Samuel's mental deterioration and resulting act of violence against this poor young lady was forseeable and avoidable by the local health authority," she stated.

She lists what she describes as 12 major failings in his treatment between his first self-admission to hospital in Chichester in August 2007 and June 2008 when he was first discharged.

She writes of one instance last June where Samuel refused to let her into his room because he was upset by hallucinations that the CIA, FBI and MI5 were trying to break in and torture him.

She has been invited to meet the chief executive of Sussex Partnership NHS Trust, Lisa Rodrigues, in early March to discuss the internal investigation which followed her sons arrest.

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