Family of schizophrenic man who battered dad to death slam NHS

Nov 5 2008 by Neil Atkinson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A FAMILY have slammed the NHS for a catalogue of errors in the treatment of their schizophrenic brother which ended with him bludgeoning their father to death outside their family home.

Former plumber Richard Thorpe, 26, violently battered Jehovah’s Witness dad Eddie, 58, in front of his distraught brother and sister with a heavy pipe-bending tool.

Psychotic Richard had dreamed up the innocent father was a paedophile who had sexually abused him as a child.

He was indefinitely detained in a mental home for the protection of the public by Leeds Crown Court.

He had ambushed road sweeper Eddie as he left home in Batley to go to work on February 21.

In the attack he repeatedly struck him around the head with the heavy tool, knocking him down concrete steps outside the house and shattering his elbow.