A court has ordered six months of psychiatric detention for a 27-year-old who, as a teenager, poured cleaning solution into his mother's coffee, ruling him not criminally responsible at the time of the attack.
Nine years after, as an 18-year-old, he poured Domestos into his own mother's coffee, then threatened her with a knife and damaged a police vehicle, a municipal court in Croatia has issued a non-final verdict. The now 27-year-old man will not go to prison but has been ordered to undergo six months of compulsory psychiatric detention.
The decision was based on a psychiatric evaluation that showed the defendant was in a state of acute psychotic decompensation caused by paranoid schizophrenia when he committed the offenses on September 19, 2017. As a person not criminally responsible, the court imposed a measure under the Act on the Protection of Persons with Mental Disorders.
On that fateful day, in broad daylight, the young man made coffee for his mother and poured an undetermined amount of cleaning solution into it. The woman noticed he had reached for the bottle of Domestos, and when she tasted the drink, she noticed an unpleasant flavor. "I asked him what he had put in my coffee, and he just started laughing," the mother recounted in court.
After she poured the coffee down the sink, her son picked up a kitchen knife and plunged it into the wooden table in the living room. Then, with the intent to intimidate, he made a chilling threat. "I'll stick it in your neck," the then-18-year-old said.
Terrified, the woman ran out of the house to call for help, while he went to the kitchen to get another knife. When police patrols arrived, they found him on the roof of the house. "He removed several roof tiles and climbed onto the roof, saying, 'I'm going to fly,'" the mother recalled.
One of the officers who responded described the chaotic scene. "He was just yelling that he wouldn't talk. He was banging the knife on the tile. He mentioned his mother and seemed completely distraught, screaming," he testified. From the roof, the young man threw a tile at the police Škoda, shattering the windshield and damaging the bodywork, causing €941 in damage to the Ministry of the Interior. After being persuaded, he handed over the knife but resisted being handcuffed.
In court, the mother revealed harrowing details about her son's condition before the fateful event. "He was using alcohol and drugs, neglected his hygiene, and would smash things in his room. He even set it on fire once," she said. She had tried to take him to a psychologist and a psychiatrist, but he refused, saying it was "a waste of money."
After his arrest, the young man spent two months in pre-trial detention, specifically in the prison hospital. A year later, his mother took him to Germany, where she was working. There, he worked in a restaurant kitchen for a month but attacked an employee and ended up in custody again. "Due to his poor mental state, he was transferred to a German clinic, where he remains today because the proceedings against him have concluded. They confirmed he has paranoid schizophrenia," the mother concluded.
The indictment was filed in late 2017, but the proceedings dragged on. In the middle of last year, a decision was made to try the defendant in absentia. His lawyer argued that his client did not commit the acts, but the prosecution, relying on the psychiatric expert's finding of non-accountability, proposed compulsory detention as the only possible sanction. Court costs will not be borne by the convicted man but will be covered from budget funds.
