In March 2019, Karen Cooper was preparing the family celebration of his father, Hedley Robinson’s, 86th birthday.
But the day before the celebration, he received a call from his mother telling him that Gary, his other son and Karen’s brother, had “trashed the house again.”
Karen immediately remembered what had happened three years ago, when for similar behavior, the authorities had ordered her his brother’s confinement in a psychiatric hospital for three months. “I thought, OK, here we go again,” he said.
Her husband went to police in Thames Valley, southeast England, to report that the attack was “not something new” and that Gary needed to be hospitalized.
But instead, Gary was arrested, sent to a hospital and then returned to the police.
According to the official report, He was deemed “unfit” to be detained under the Mental Health Act.which is used by the British police to order the detention of potentially dangerous people due to their mental health.
This happened even though “Many people said Gary was not well.”. And since he was found “unfit” to be questioned by the public defender, the police had no choice but to release him, even though he remained under investigation.
Karen’s mother Margarete was called by the police as the responsible adult for Gary and, accompanied by police officers, they returned home.
Barely ten minutes after the police left them both there, Gary grabbed a knife and attacked his parents.
Karen found out about the attacks when she returned from a course and found a police officer at the entrance to her house.
The agent told him he had to go to the hospital. On the way he explained to her that his father was in surgery and her mother was in the emergency room due to the serious injuries her son had caused.
“He had stabbed her in the throat. She couldn’t speak well, but I managed to hear ‘Gary did it.’ “She couldn’t believe that her son had attacked them like that,” Karen recalls.
Margarete survived the attack – the cut passed very close to an artery – but doctors were unable to save Hedley, who died three weeks later.
Admitted to a psychiatric hospital
In August 2019 Gary was held indefinitely in a psychiatric hospital after he admitted charges of manslaughter with diminished responsibility and attempted murder.
Psychiatrists agreed that he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.. Karen believes she could have done more to prevent the attack.
“If they had detained my brother that day and taken him to a hospital or left him under control for another 24 hours, perhaps something else would have happened,” he says.
The government agencies that deal with these cases They only focus on the processes when they are in courtbut then, Karen points out, they forget about the people.
“Now I have another life, and where is the support to help me overcome an event like this in which my brother killed my father?” he asks.
“There is an attitude of simply complying with all the requirements: the attacker was captured and confined in the hospital, but from there no one does anything else,” he claims.
Unsupported
Karen says her life and that of her family “stopped overnight” and the future was “altered forever.”
“My brother is receiving all the help possible, he is in a psychiatric hospital. So his needs are being taken into account,” he says.
“But me and my family? Nobody is taking us into account. We have to do it on our own”.
Karen, who had to sell her 20-year-old business when she felt she could no longer run it after the attack, believes families in similar situations should have access to a psychologist or some therapy services, as well as legal support.
Both the police and the health authority involved in the investigations into his father’s death concluded that several sections of the Mental Health Act should be reviewed.
The local police who handled the case indicated that, as a result of these investigations, its handling of people with mental health problems has changed and the training of agents in this regard has also been improved.
One of the local police officials, Katy Barrow-Grint, clarifies that, according to investigations, at the time Gary Robinson was released, there was no reason to suspect that he would harm himself or his parents.
“The case investigators also found that police should have made a request for a second evaluation,” Barrow-Grint said. “We accept that,” she added.
But he clarified that the inquiry also found that several informal requests were made to mental health professionals for a re-evaluation of Gary’s mental state, but were rejected.
The internal police review of the case has not yet been published.
Responding to Karen’s call for more support to be provided to families, the British Ministry of Justice said the government was “quadrupling funding for victim support services and our Victims and Prisoners Bill will expand the definition of ‘victim’ to include families affected by a homicide.”
For Karen, what is clear is that she must continue with her life knowing what her brother did. “The challenge is that he is my brother and I love him,” he says.
“He is my younger brother and at the same time he committed a horrible, gruesome and cruel attack on my parents and killed my father. Both things affect you at the same time.”
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.
Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!