NHS ‘lost’ mental patient who went on to kill

Alan McMullan plunged a kitchen knife into Claire Wilson’s back as she walked to work at a Pizza Hut restaurant in Grimsby on June 7, 2009. She was six months pregnant and her unborn baby, named April, also died.

In the year before, McMullan had gone into Grimsby Police Station armed with a knife on three separate occasions claiming voices were ordering him to kill, but after twice being admitted to a mental health ward was turned away after a third assessment.

An independent review has found it had been “reasonable” to discharge McMullan, named in the report as Mr A, but said “he should have been monitored in the community with a better understanding of the risk he might pose to the public”.

The report, commissioned by NHS Yorkshire and Humber, could not identify a “critical single cause” leading to the tragedy, but found a catalogue of missed opportunities in McMullan’s care and treatment by North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus (CTP).

McMullan, who was jailed for life in 2010 for the murder of 21-year-old Miss Wilson, did not receive a full psychological assessment and neither his doctor nor his psychiatrists were told about his third visit to the police station.

The report, by Verita, said: “We concluded that Mr A’s assessment by the mental health service was incomplete, his diagnosis was unclear and staff did not really get to know him. He was not followed up assertively when he left hospital but staff did not know where he was living.

“We identified problems within the organisational processes but we found no causal link between these problems and the tragedy of 2009. Many substantial improvements have since been introduced.”

It described the CTP’s psychological service as “not fit for purpose”, the discharge and follow-up arrangements as “inadequate”, and identified “significant” gaps in his records. These included no record of the decision to discharge McMullan from the service.

McMullan, who was 53 at the time of the murder, was described as being calm and pleasant and with no history of violence, but the report found that factors suggesting he was a higher level of risk were not taken into account.

He had spent a total of five weeks in hospital but his assessment was “incomplete”.

Following the report’s publication yesterday, Dr Peter Melton, speaking on behalf of the CTP at a Press conference in Willerby, said: “We would like to reassure both the family of Claire Wilson and the wider public that everything was done to ensure our mental health services were, and continue to be, safe and of the highest quality.

“Incidents like this are thankfully very rare and as has been previously stated were not as a result of the care Mr McMullan received.”

Kevin Bond, chief executive of Navigo, which now provides mental health services in North East Lincolnshire, said assessments of McMullan nearly a year before the murder did not find any symptoms associated with mental health problems.

Commenting on the report, however, Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said: “It is an insane system that allows a clearly disturbed and desperate patient to live alone, without receiving consistent care and treatment for his alcoholism and hallucinations.

“Had mental health services provided Alan McMullan with the help he requested, a young woman and her unborn baby may not have lost their lives.”