Risk failure allowed knife attack

Three major opportunities were missed to assess risks posed by a paranoid schizophrenic who repeatedly stabbed a woman in a supermarket, a report has found.

Samuel Reid-Wentworth, who harboured fantasies about killing young women, inflicted 21 stab wounds on Lucy Yates with a pocket knife six weeks after being discharged from a mental health unit. Ms Yates, then 22, survived the attack in Littlehampton, West Sussex, in 2008.

Reid-Wentworth was detained under the Mental Health Act by a judge at Lewes Crown Court the following year.