Mother slams ‘catastrophic’ choice to free paranoid schizophrenic from jail before he murdered her son in Birmingham

A mother has condemned the ‘catastrophic’ decision to release a paranoid schizophrenic from prison before he murdered her son with a knife.

Zephaniah McLeod, 28, previously told shocked onlookers: “look at this”. lashing out at party goers enjoying a night out in Birmingham.

Zephaniah McLeod had been released from prison before his rampageCredit: PA

Jacob Billington was murdered while enjoying a night out with friendsCredit: PA

He knife Jacob Billington23, in the neck as he walked back to a hotel with friends in September 2020.

The grinning killer then attacked others by ‘calmly’ randomly choosing his victims, leaving one partially paralyzed and the other fighting for life.

Shockingly, the paranoid schizophrenic had been allowed to walk free jail unsupervised after his release in April 2020.

Jacob’s mother spoke out today after a coroner ruled her son had been unlawfully killed, saying there were several failings at the authorities.

She criticized the decision to release the “violent” and “dangerous” McLeod just months before he unleashed his rampage.

Joanne Billington said: “My son Jacob was a wonderful young man who lost his life in horrific circumstances at the hands of an extremely mentally ill person.

“This is every parent’s nightmare – and it became our reality.”

The mother also made comparisons between her son’s death and her son’s death Nottingham attack the last three being killed summersaying no lessons had been learned.

McLeod was lifetime with a minimum duration of 21 years – initially to be admitted to a high-security hospital.

He had previously admitted manslaughter, four attempted murders and three separate offenses of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Birmingham stabbings: Family of victim, 23, pay tribute to ‘light of our lives’ after he died in 90-minute knife rampage

McLeod, who expressed “dark and sinister thoughts about murder” to medics, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2013 but “never” received proper treatment.

McLeod was only seen face-to-face by a mental health professional health team on September 3.

He then ‘refused’ to attend a psychiatric assessment – just three days before he was caught up in the knife frenzy.

McLeod also refused to take his medication because he was “afraid of the side effects of the prescription.” drugs“.

Chilling CCTV footage showed McLeod ambushing strangers as he stalked through the city center with a knife.

After stabbing Jacob from Sheffield Hallam University, he also stabbed his friend, leaving him seriously injured.

Jacob’s mother Joanne Billington shares her outrage

“Throughout the sentencing and serious review of the case, we discovered that the perpetrator was known to all the agencies we would expect to protect the safety of the public. He never complied with what the services offered and refused to take his medications.

“He was released from prison unsupervised at the end of his sentence and there was no effective release planning for this dangerous individual and the risk to the public was never seriously considered.

‘Services failed to such an extent that it was not known where he was, or even in what city he was.

“We also learned that McLeod was subject to more stringent public protection arrangements, but was removed from this arrangement six months before his release simply because he failed to comply with the process.

“This was a catastrophic decision that meant that many effective measures for monitoring McLeod were removed.

“This dangerous man with a serious and persistent mental illness, whose risk to the public was well documented, simply walked out of prison and disappeared.”

McLeod even paused the rampage halfway through to get into a taxi and pick up another knife from home before continuing the bloodshed.

Jacob was pronounced dead after being stabbed in the back with the knife so forcefully that it exited through his chest.

In a chillingly similar knife attack, Valdo Calocane, who also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, stabbed Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and Ian Coates, 65, to death.

At the time he was wanted by Police after not being present court for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

Concluding the inquest on Friday, senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull Louise Hunt said: “(McLeod) has had a long time. history of violent crimes and was known to pose a high risk of harm to the public and was sporadically taking antipsychotic medication, but there was no lawfully available monitoring that could be imposed on him at the end of his sentence to protect the sentence . public of the recognized high risk he presented.”