A WOMAN who stabbed her upstairs neighbour after a row about loud

music was insane at the time, a jury has decided.

Victoria Whyte's rare defence of insanity was accepted by the jury at

Edinburgh Sheriff Court, which decided that she did attack Mr Norman

Pearson in the Granton Medway, Edinburgh, on September 17 last year, but

acquitted her.

Sheriff Andrew Bell sent Whyte, 31, to the State Mental Hospital at

Carstairs. The sheriff turned down a plea from her solicitor, Mr Martin

Collins, to send her back to the Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline,

where she was treated after the incident.

Whyte, from Stockport, a single mother with a three-year-old daughter,

told the jury that she stabbed Mr Pearson in the backside but added: ''I

was so detached. It was as if it wasn't real.''

She said that, when she was being interviewed by police, she thought

she was in the police station in the TV series, The Bill.

Psychiatrist Alan Beveridge told the court that Whyte had suffered

''an acute psychotic episode''. He said staff at the Dunfermline

hospital were convinced her mental illness was genuine.

Mr Pearson, 33, a ventilation engineer, told the trial that he went

down to Whyte's flat to apologise after she sent a friend up to complain

about his loud music. He described how Whyte went for him on the common

stairs and stabbed him twice.