Madness In The Fast Lane - BBC1 Now.

[Zoidburg]

The curious case of Sabina Eriksson of police camera action fame

BBC - BBC One Programmes - Madness in the Fast Lane

Local to me and car crash television in more ways than one.

[Mr Larrington]

The PVR had a braino, so I missed the first five minutes, but watched the rest.

Weeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiird

[GruB]

I've started to watch it but not sure I can continue.  Can some one give me a 'spoiler' view so I don't have to?

[bobb]

I just watched it. What an incredibly sad story. And utterly bizarre....

[border-rider]

I've started to watch it but not sure I can continue.  Can some one give me a 'spoiler' view so I don't have to?

very disturbing.  Compelling, and uncomfortably voyeuristic

I can understand why you found that difficult.  

(click to show/hide)

2  very disturbed women repeatedly run into traffic on the M6, fighting off police officers and others with apparent great strength and impunity to their injuries

One is seriously injured and hospitalised, the other is arrested and after (possibly controversially - this is what the programme gets round to later) being released next day kills someone, bashes herself on the head repeatedly with a hammer, clocks a chap who tried to stop her on the head with a roof tile and then jumps off a bridge into traffic (all on CCTV).  Arrested again and tried.

[GruB]

Although I found it quite hard to view, it was also horribly compelling so I have got passed the motorway bits and I'm now on to the re-enactments.  

[GruB]

Cheers Mal    I have been coming back again and again. I am not sure what that says about my psyche    I found it really difficult when she woke up, got up and ran off for the last time but thankfully that time she was not struck.

[Zoidburg]

The thing that depressed me was that she was released and not sectioned.

There were several excuses made about her having been sedated and the police surgeon finding her to be calm and lucid but the main failing was a lack of communication and continuity.

Why were the cameras and footage not taken from the crew as evidence and reviewed at the station?

Why did the original officers involved not put forward very strongly that under no circumstances was she to be released?

I know the place she was released from, it's a fair way on foot from where she ended up stabbing someone, it also happens to be a custody suite on the other side of town from the station which may explain the communication breakdown once the first lot handed the job on.

 

[dkahn400]

The thing that depressed me was that she was released and not sectioned.

There were several excuses made about her having been sedated and the police surgeon finding her to be calm and lucid but the main failing was a lack of communication and continuity.

Why were the cameras and footage not taken from the crew as evidence and reviewed at the station?

Why did the original officers involved not put forward very strongly that under no circumstances was she to be released?

I know the place she was released from, it's a fair way on foot from where she ended up stabbing someone, it also happens to be a custody suite on the other side of town from the station which may explain the communication breakdown once the first lot handed the job on.

 

She was released following a court appearance. IIRC she was found guilty of minor offences and sentenced to the time she had already spent in custody. The arresting officers can hardly direct a court not to release someone. It does seem strange, however, that that court did not ask for psychiatric and social reports before releasing her although she did seem superficially "normal" in custody. It's the seemingly identical psychotic episode happening to both twins at the same time that makes it so weird. It was truly disturbing viewing.

[Zoidburg]

The thing that depressed me was that she was released and not sectioned.

There were several excuses made about her having been sedated and the police surgeon finding her to be calm and lucid but the main failing was a lack of communication and continuity.

Why were the cameras and footage not taken from the crew as evidence and reviewed at the station?

Why did the original officers involved not put forward very strongly that under no circumstances was she to be released?

I know the place she was released from, it's a fair way on foot from where she ended up stabbing someone, it also happens to be a custody suite on the other side of town from the station which may explain the communication breakdown once the first lot handed the job on.

 

She was released following a court appearance. IIRC she was found guilty of minor offences and sentenced to the time she had already spent in custody. The arresting officers can hardly direct a court not to release someone. It does seem strange, however, that that court did not ask for psychiatric and social reports before releasing her although she did seem superficially "normal" in custody. It's the seemingly identical psychotic episode happening to both twins at the same time that makes it so weird. It was truly disturbing viewing.

They don't need to direct the court as she should have never been in front of the beak in the first place.

All the information should have been shared and it wasn't, she should have been sectioned, it was medical emergency not a simple criminal matter.

She slipped throught the net and a man died.

[GruB]

When you watch the video of her in custody, she presents a very normal and chatty person.  The only 'odd' comment I believe we heard her make was about the saying from Sweden about accidents coming in twos.  Apart from that where is the evidence of her state of mind being so deluded as to require an appropriate adult in the form of a mental health nurse?
If they had concerns about her mental state of mind then they would not have charged her or put her before the court as she would have been sectioned without leaving the police station.

I have not continued to watch the re-enactment as yet, but what exactly was her mental illness?

[Zoidburg]

She had been whacked up with enough sedative to calm her down.

That info was not passed on, she kept fighting after she was struck by a vehicle, it was way beyond simple fight or flight she was clearly unhinged, they just turfed a suicidal and violent person onto the streets, the fact that she had just made a determined attempt to kill her self was enough to hang on to her at the hospital.

No one person did anything purposely wrong but somehow no one seemed to put all the information together, the info was there and it wasn't acted on, there seemed to be no strategy for dealing with a real mentalist, she certainly should not have seen the outside of the hospital for a few days or a week maybe.

Finger pointing won't help of course but at least identifying what went wrong and taking measures to prevent it happening again would, I can't recall if there was an inquest into the death of the chap who was stabbed but maybe there needs to be.

[Cunobelin]

I think the psychiatrist ( the "independent" who was interviewed) suggests that both the diagnoses were transient in nature

Sedation may have masked the problem by (in his words) taking the edge off the paranoia.

Same with the sentencing - very limited options.

[GruB]

Zoiders,

I am not finger pointing or allocating blame, but I am using my experience of similar circumstances and trying to put myself in the position of those that I witnessed and drawing observations from that.

Firstly, I have had similar people of a positive mindset that were seriously trying to do themselves harm and they were on a combination of Red Bull and cocaine.  When it wore off they were the most normal public school types you would ever find but whilst stimulated beyond your imagination they required 9 people to hold them down.

Positive mindset is something that can even beat pain and inhibitors such as CS Spray.  Mental illness can also beat pain and CS Spray.

When a person is fingerprinted in custody there are a number of processes that happen in the background.  It all comes down to identity.  With someone like those two I would have expected a history to be available as a result of those processes.  I would be very interested to know if there was one as if that was ignored then it in itself would be negligence to a degree.

We also don't know if she was seen by a GP in the cells and whether her mental state was assessed.  I would like to think that did happen and as she was deemed suitable to charge, she was therefore deemed not mental enough to be sectioned.

At A&E I would be very surprised if she had not been seen by a GP then for her mental state to be assessed based upon your observations - the fact that she repeatedly tried to throw herself under moving vehicles and also had to be sedated. 

One of the good signs of mental illness is dishevelment, the inability to look after yourself.  Teeth, hair and general body condition such as odour are simple signs.  The fact that she 'knew' the had not been able to find her other sock and that her feet smelt and that she was concerned for the person searching her shoes is not the sort of behaviour a 'normal' mentally unwell person presents.  Nor is laughing and joking with the custody staff.

[GruB]

Okay, no previous convictions the Detective Super said - so the checks and processes would have come back no trace.

But, having been refused entry back onto the coach they start to walk up the motorway, after having been checked by the police in the car park.

They are walking in the middle, not trying to car dive until the Highway Patrol approach them with lights flashing.

I now wonder whether they were actually trying to get away from all instead of actually trying to die.

[Zoidburg]

She tried to kill herself, she fought the police and paramedics - yes that happens but they found no drink or drugs on the twin sisters.

It did state that she had been seen by the police GP but he had not been told that she had been sedated previously I also don't think he would have signed off on it if he had seen the tape, her suddenly being as nice as pie was the creepy thing that rang alarms bells for me - when they can swing from suicide to being the happy face of cheerfulness in the same day then you have to worry, thats the roller coaster of crazy time. You could see it in her eyes and facial expression that something was amiss, her body language and the way she went through being processed seemed like she was on auto-pilot as well.

None of it quite fitted, I would not like to think thats it normal practice to set someone loose after a suicide attempt within 24 hours even if they are clean and well kempt, mania takes many forms.

They may not have gone for the car dive until the highways guys turned up but it acted as a trigger to some very weird and deep shit that was going on between them.

[GruB]

Having watched it to the end I don't think she was trying to kill herself.  I suspect she was actually trying to get away, but we will never know as she refused to answer any questions other than to reply 'no comment'.

As the Clinical Psych stated - both conditions that she was diagnosed with are very rare.  He has only seen 1 in a large number of murders.  But he did say that both have the potential to relapse once she is released.

The debate now really should move onto the rights of the mentally unwell vs the rights of you and I to continue living our lives?

[Zoidburg]

If some one gets killed then it's failure of duty of care to both the mentally ill person and the victim.

Double fail.

 

[Von Broad]

God, if ever there was a 'truth stranger than fiction' story.....how truly disturbing.

Disturbing because nobody knows what the hell is going on - the coach driver doesn't understand their behaviour on the coach, the motorway patrol officers are completely bewildered about what's happening, the medical people in the hospital find nothing seriously wrong, the two guys that try to help her can't make out what's playing out before them, the two psychiatrists in the court case have slightly differing diagnosis, and the woman herself offers no explanation or remorse in the face or murder, but only 'no comment', and members of the poor family can't understand why, after killing one of their own, she'll be released soon.

And going back to that coach driver not allowing them back on the coach because he was suspicious of something.....and all that unfolding. Chilling stuff indeed.

[dkahn400]

If some one gets killed then it's failure of duty of care to both the mentally ill person and the victim.

Double fail.

 

No, it looks as though some wrong decisions were made in this case but to say that the system has failed if a person released from custody kills a member of the public ever is setting an impossibly high standard. The only way to guarantee that is never to release anyone.

[Zoidburg]

If some one gets killed then it's failure of duty of care to both the mentally ill person and the victim.

Double fail.

 

No, it looks as though some wrong decisions were made in this case but to say that the system has failed if a person released from custody kills a member of the public ever is setting an impossibly high standard. The only way to guarantee that is never to release anyone.

It's not an impossibly high standard when three different state services were involved and no one put two and two together, not to mention a documentary film crew being present.

If we need more layers of redundancy than that we have serious problems.

[LindaG]

You'd be surprised how many people behave in a violent, unpredictable way, with no control - then 12 hours later are completely normal.

And hindsight is wonderful. 

[GruB]

From what I can see and from my understanding of the system and following the update from Dr Eastman, the right people did put 2 and 2 together and it came up 4, as it should.  If you listen to what the Dr said, both examples of her illness were transient, very rare and unpredictable.  The systems we have in place in the health and police service do not cater for this type of illness.  The expert said he had only ever knowingly seen 1 such example before.

With all that in mind I don't believe much would be different if it was to happen again today.

From viewing the videos you cannot begin to understand why they are doing what they are doing or what their actual intentions were.  To draw conclusions from that, as you suggest would undoubtedly infringe upon their rights.

I have no doubt in my mind that many arguments on here are often turned upon themselves too.  For example if this story was about a mentally unwell person that was incarcerated for the wrong reasons then people would be pointing the finger in the opposite direction claiming rights were being abused etc.

[dkahn400]

I have no doubt in my mind that many arguments on here are often turned upon themselves too.  For example if this story was about a mentally unwell person that was incarcerated for the wrong reasons then people would be pointing the finger in the opposite direction claiming rights were being abused etc.

 

[Regulator]

If some one gets killed then it's failure of duty of care to both the mentally ill person and the victim.

Double fail.

 

No, it looks as though some wrong decisions were made in this case but to say that the system has failed if a person released from custody kills a member of the public ever is setting an impossibly high standard. The only way to guarantee that is never to release anyone.

It's not an impossibly high standard when three different state services were involved and no one put two and two together, not to mention a documentary film crew being present.

If we need more layers of redundancy than that we have serious problems.

I didn't realise you were a Section12(2) approved medical practitioner or an approved clinician, Zoiders...