A 19-YEAR-OLD man has pleaded guilty to killing one woman and stabbing five others at Russell Square in central London in August.
Appearing in the Old Bailey this morning, Zakaria Bulhan admitted the manslaughter of 64-year-old American tourist Darlene Horton. Bulhan made the admission on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He had been charged with murder and attempted murder, but the court accepted this manslaughter plea.
BBC News reports that the case was considered “at the highest levels” before Bulhan’s guilty manslaughter plea was accepted.
The court heard that Bulhan, who had an address in Tooting, south London, had been suffering from an “acute” episode of paranoid schizophrenia on 3 August.
Bulhan attacked a group of people in Russell Square, a central London location near landmarks such as the British Museum and Oxford Street, where he stabbed the mother-of-two from Tallahassee, Florida, through the heart and lung. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Horton was the wife of a professor at Florida State University who had been teaching summer classes in London, and had been due to fly home the following day.
The other five people injured have since made good recoveries, the court heard.
Prosecutor Mark Heywood said: “Without warning or provocation, the man stabbed six people in relatively quick succession, saying nothing to any of them, moving on after each stabbing towards his next victim.”
A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service told TheJournal.ie that Bulhan will be sentenced tomorrow.
With reporting from AFP.
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