A paranoid schizophrenic who ran down and killed a mother of three in a hit-and-run frenzy aimed at killing many more has been detained in a secure hospital indefinitely.
Matthew Tvrdon, 32, turned a three-ton van into a weapon and mowed down Karina Menzies, 31, in a deadly 30-minute spree in Cardiff, south Wales.
A high court judge at Cardiff Crown Court sentenced him yesterday to be held indefinitely in a maximum security hospital for people suffering mental illness.
It follows the acceptance of a guilty plea from Tvrdon to manslaughter through diminished responsibility for the death of Ms Menzies.
Tvrdon sped through a Cardiff suburb as he suffered severe paranoid delusions and hallucinations in on October 19 last year.
In a lethal fantasy he targeted strangers who he believed had conspired to undermine his mental health over years of plotting.
During 30 minutes of mayhem in the city’s Ely and Leckwith districts, he attacked five separate groups of people, parents with children, in his van.
Eighteen people were injured in the devastation he caused, including a police officer assaulted with a crook lock as he tried to arrest him.
Many of the victims and their families listened as the judge Mr Justice Wyn Williams summed up on the second day of the sentencing in Cardiff.
Several reacted angrily as sentence was passed and the judge made it clear that he will be detained long term for treatment in a secure hospital.
“Is that all he’s having,” one man shouted as he left the court in anger.
Tvrdon appeared at the hearing via videolink from Ashworth high security psychiatric hospital in Maghull, Merseyside, where he will now be detained.
“You caused incalculable harm to many people,” said the judge.
“But I am satisfied that without your serious mental illness you would not have behaved in the way you did. I will make a hospital order that you are detained without restriction of time.
“However, you should expect that you will be detained for a very long time.”