A MAN was convicted of seven attempted murders yesterday after he attacked three children and four women with a machete at an infant school Teddy Bears picnic.
Horrett Campbell, 33, a paranoid schizophrenic, was told he faces life imprisonment for the attack at St Luke's infants school, in Blakenhall, Wolverhampton, in July this year.
A jury of six men and six women at Stafford Crown Court took less than three hours to find him guilty unanimously on all counts.
Campbell stood impassively as Mr Justice Sedley ordered him to be detained at Ashworth high-security hospital, in Liverpool, for 12 weeks.
He said: ``Unless this is a case in which I am caused to send you to a mental hospital under the Mental Health Act, I shall be certainly passing a sentence of life imprisonment on you.''
He said he would recommend a bravery award for Miss Lisa Potts, the nursery nurse at the school. The court heard, despite suffering the worst injuries in the attack, she shielded many of her young pupils from Campbell's blows.
The judge said: ``You may well be thinking that Lisa Potts deserves more formal recognition. I think so too. I shall be taking what steps I can to ensure that is considered.''
After the verdict, Detective Superintendent Sandy Craig, of West Midlands Police, added his praise for Miss Potts's bravery. He said: ``I am quite convinced that she saved us from one, two or even three murder inquiries on the day.''
Campbell's mental condition was not diagnosed until after his arrest, despite a previous court appearance when a probation report recommended his mental health be examined.
In November 1995, he appeared at Wolverhampton magistrates court charged with affray and possession of an offensive weapon. The pre-sentence probation report advised a psychiatric report because he set fire to his car and had heard voices whispering in his head for several years.
Campbell was sentenced to two months' imprisonment but a psychiatric report was not ordered. The stipendiary magistrate in the case, Mr Ian Gillespie, defended his actions yesterday.
``Mr Campbell's solicitor told me that Mr Campbell had informed him that he would not co-operate with any psychiatrist. That alone would not have dissuaded me from ordering a psychiatric report.
``However, I was informed by his solicitor that Mr Campbell denied having head voices and that when he told the probation officer about the ``whispering voices'' he had been ``joking around''. The offences for which I was sentencing were not such as to trigger automatically the need for a psychiatric report.''
The four-day trial heard Campbell had planned the attack for two months, claiming the children at the school picked on him and shouted at him and were part of a conspiracy against him. He told police that he believed the children were devils and had turned against him along with the rest of society.
At 3.10pm on July 8, he left his flat, on the sixth floor of Villiers House, a tower block overlooking the school, armed with a machete. Written on the blade was the words: ``You filthy devils'' and ``666 Marks the Devil''. He wore a deerstalker hat, with an Iron Cross drawn on it in pen, and two bolts attached on each side resembling the horns of a devil.
He attacked his first victim, Ms Wendy Willington, a 29-year-old mother who was waiting outside the school with her youngest son. She was hit over the head with the machete and knocked to the floor.
He then attacked two other mothers, Azra Rafiq and Surinder Chopra, both aged 29. He jumped over a small green fence around a play area outside the school's nursery and attacked three children, Ahmed Malek, aged three, and Rhena Chopra and Francesca Quintyne, both aged four.
His worst attack was on Miss Potts, 21, who suffered severe cuts to the head, arms, and back.
When arrested and asked why he had stopped his horrific attack, Campbell said: ``It was enough. I wanted to get even and hurt them.''
Police who searched his flat found newspaper pictures of the Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton and Martin Bryant, the man who shot dead 35 people in Tasmania, pasted to his wall. Beside Bryant's picture, Campbell had drawn a Valentine love heart and Cupid's bow.
In police interview, he said he felt an affinity with Hamilton because he too had been outcast by society and wanted to get even for being misrepresented.
He said he felt he had been forced to carry out the attack to clear his name and had constructed an arsenal of homemade weapons in a small workroom at his flat.
After leaving the court in tears, Miss Potts said she was pleased that justice had been done but said she could never forgive Campbell for inflicting the injuries on her pupils.
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