Cheshire criminal defence lawyers will likely have been closely following the case of Nicholas Salvador, the paranoid schizophrenic who decapitated an 82-year-old woman in Edmonton in London late last year – and it’s just been announced that Salvador has been cleared of her murder after being found to be legally insane.
Now, the 25-year-old will be held indefinitely at a psychiatric hospital after a jury of six men and six women judged him to be not guilty by reason of insanity, although the fact that he did actually kill Palmira Silva was never in dispute, the Guardian reports.
Footage was shown to the jurors of Salvador – who lived with a close friend and his family just three doors down from Ms Silva – smashing his way through back gardens after killing two cats that he believed to be demons in a 45-minute rampage that ended when he attacked Ms Silva in her garden.
Salvador’s barrister Bernard Richmond was quoted by the BBC as saying: “Mental illness in whatever circumstances can be terrifying for the person and one of the things we have to bear in mind that, after this case is finished, he will have to continue, as his mental state improves, coming to terms with the horror of what he did when he was unwell."
After decapitating the victim, he ran through gardens and tore through fences while those nearby were evacuated by police, before he was eventually arrested on Nightingale Road. Psychiatrists for both the criminal defence and prosecution told the jurors that Salvador was a paranoid schizophrenic and he has since been treated at Broadmoor hospital, which is where he will remain.