Daniel O’Hara Wright will not be released from hospital until the Secretary of State deems him to be safe.
That is the result of the hospital order imposed by Judge Ian Pringle QC at Oxford Crown Court this morning.
The 24-year-old was found not guilty by reason of insanity of murdering his mother, Carole Wright, 62, in National Trust woodland near Christmas Common on October 23 last year.
Lawyers for the Uxbridge man accepted O’Hara Wright was responsible for the brutal assault that led to her death – but said he was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time.
One consultant psychiatrist who gave evidence to jurors at Oxford Crown Court earlier this month described him as one of the most psychotic people he’d met in 30 years of practice.
Sometimes called a ‘special verdict’, in finding him not guilty by reason of insanity the jury had to be satisfied that O’Hara Wright was suffering from a ‘disease of the mind’ – in this case, previously undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia – and did not know that what he was doing was wrong.
Custody van arrives at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday morning Picture: ED NIX
As a result of their verdict, the judge was left with one of three ways to ‘dispose’ of the case.
First, impose a hospital order requiring him to receive treatment at a secure psychiatric unit. Second, a supervision order that would place him under the care of a doctor or the probation service for up to two years. Third, an absolute discharge.
Judge Ian Pringle QC imposed the first, after reading a report from Dr Christian Brown of Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospital confirming a bed was available for O’Hara Wright.
He said: "I'm going to pass what I can only pass under law as a result of the verdict of the jury on December 10, namely that I pass a section 37 hospital order which will detain you in Broadmoor, where there is a bed available and you will continue to be treated by Dr [Christian] Brown and all his very able assistants.
"There will also be a restriction on your release under section 41 of the Mental Health Act along with that order."
That order will serve a little like a life sentence. O’Hara Wright can only be released from hospital on the order of the Secretary of State, a government minister. He will remain under some form of supervision from doctors for the rest of his life.
Broadmoor Hospital Picture: Andrew Smith / Broadmoor Hospital / CC BY-SA 2.0
In a moving victim personal statement his sister, Michelle, said she hoped the case would result in greater awareness of the signs of deteriorating mental health.
In the years and months leading up to his mother’s death, O’Hara Wright had begun behaving more strangely.
He became increasingly interested in conspiracy theories, including the QAnon belief that former president Donald Trump has been put on this earth to defeat a shadowy paedophile ring.
In the early part of 2020 he eschewed a family skiing holiday to Austria, instead choosing to stay in Uxbridge, later telling doctors he had ‘spiritual work’ to do.
On March 6, 2020, his older sister was shocked when she took a newly shaven-headed O’Hara Wright out for dinner and he called himself an ‘interdimensional shaman’.
Former friends were worried about his unusual behaviour. One said they’d last seen him ‘walking through bushes’ in 2018.
Psychiatrists instructed by both the prosecution and the defence agreed that these were the early symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, the disease with which he was diagnosed after he killed his mum.
He was probably suffering from the second, ‘active’, phase of the disease in the months leading up to the killing, Dr Kennedy said.
A month before the walk in Christmas Common he had heard a voice telling him to hit his mother with a rock while they were out walking in woodland. He resisted the urge but also described hearing other internal voices urging him to kill his family and himself.
“He certainly deteriorated very dramatically on the day of the offence,” Dr Kennedy told the jury.
When he was being treated on the intensive care ward at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, in the wake of his arrest his behaviour was erratic.
He suggested the nursing staff were aliens and were trying to steal his blood. He spat his own faeces into the face of one of the police officers guarding him and, the following day, tried to stab a nurse in the neck with a spoon handle.
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