KELLS AND CONNOR, Ireland — A man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia cut off his mother’s head with a steak knife during a frenzied attack last year telling his horrified brother that “she is trying to kill us, you know”.
Antrim Crown Court heard that John Charles Coburn (35) attacked his mother Lynn at her home in the village of Kells and Connor in a horrific attack on Mother’s Day.
Yesterday Mr Justice Burgess imposed an indeterminate sentence on Coburn who believes he still hears his mother talking to him through his TV.
The judge imposed a minimum tariff of five years but explained that “for all intents and purposes it is equivalent to a life sentence”.
He explained that university- educated Coburn’s “release back into the community will be determined by the parole commissioners should they consider it safe to do so”. Coburn had originally been charged with murdering his 53-year-old mother but the charge was dropped when he pleaded guilty to her “manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility”.
Antrim Crown Court had heard: “Death was due to decapitation and multiple stab wounds to the head, neck and chest.”
The court also heard that Coburn’s brother Andrew (32) was also injured in the attack at their mother’s Rossburn Manor home on April 3 last year.
Defence lawyer Denis Boyd, said the judge, revealed that although symptoms of a clear psychotic illness first began to show itself as far back as 1996, Coburn had done little to help his own situation and according to doctors had not only failed to properly engage with them, but at the same time experimented and tampered with his own medication.
During an earlier hearing, Frank O’Donoghue QC, prosecuting, said that moments before Coburn turned on his mother for no apparent reason, his brother Andrew, who had been taking a nap after preparing their Mother’s Day turkey dinner, had heard the pair chatting in the kitchen.
He overheard his mother talk of buying John new clothes and of taxing his motorbike, before hearing her screaming out in pain.
Initially he thought she must have burnt herself while checking the turkey in the oven, but when her screams did not stop, he rushed downstairs.
Mr Justice Burgess said, however, by the time Andrew got downstairs to the kitchen “the screaming had stopped”, and to his horror found his brother John kneeling on top of their mother strangling her.
“Andrew saw the defendant had a knife, that he was stabbing his mother and there was blood,” the judge said.
“Andrew asked the defendant for the knife. He remembers the defendant saying, ‘she was trying to kill us, you know’. The defendant then attacked Andrew,” Mr Justice Burgess said.
Fearing that he too was about to be killed, he grabbed the phone and ran outside to raise the alarm, where police and paramedics found him lying covered in blood on the front lawn in the Co Antrim private housing development.
The court had also heard Coburn was living with his great-aunt at the time, and had gone with her the previous day to visit his mother, with whom his relationship was said to have been “close, although there were periods of disagreements and instability”.
His mother was not at home, and was staying at her partner’s Banbridge home, and did not return until the next day.
Coburn was arrested at the scene, but when later questioned, it became apparent he was mentally unwell.
It was said doctors also suspected he may have been taking illegal drugs in the days leading up to the attack.
However, Mr Justice Burgess said while Coburn had admitted he didn’t know what illegal drugs he had taken, “the dominate influence” operating on Coburn “at the time of the killing of his mother, was a chronic and severe mental illness ... namely paranoid schizophrenia”.