A man has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of an 87-year-old man who was fatally stabbed while riding a scooter in west London.
Lee Byer stabbed Thomas O’Halloran in the neck and chest in Greenford in August 2022.
On Monday, the 45-year-old man, of no fixed address, denied murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser offenses of manslaughter by diminished responsibility and possession of an offensive weapon.
Prosecutor Gareth Patterson KC accepted the pleas after mental health reports found Byer was psychotic, heard voices, suffered from paranoid delusions and paranoid schizophrenia.
He said the defendant’s mental state provided an explanation for what was an “unprovoked attack”.
A member of the public encountered the victim on his scooter coming from a walkway linking Runnymede Gardens and Welland Gardens and called police shortly after 4pm on 16 August 2022.
Despite receiving first aid, Mr O’Halloran was pronounced at the scene at 4.54pm.
He and the defendant were seen on CCTV heading towards the passage where their paths crossed.
Other than Byer, no one else entered or left the area when the victim was attacked, the footage showed.
As he exited the passage, a knife was seen in Byer’s hand.
He was caught putting the handle of a knife down a drain in Haymill Close on the way back to his mother’s house. Forensic analysis found the victim’s blood on the handle, but the blade was not found.
In police interviews following his arrest at his mother’s home on August 18, he denied being the suspect captured on CCTV, claiming he was in his mother’s garden or park at the time.
Months before the murder, footage posted on social media showed musician O’Halloran singing while raising money for Ukraine.
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