A mental health trust says it made 'substantial changes' to its procedures, after a teenager who had 'become invisible' to its staff stabbed a grandmother to death.
But Sunderland's Senior Coroner has suggested there are still lessons to be learned from his investigation into the killing of shop worker Joan Hoggett. On September 5, 2018, 19-year-old Ethan Mountain walked into the Sunderland One Stop Shop where Joan worked and unleashed a brutal knife attack upon her.
Despite the efforts of paramedics and doctors at Sunderland Royal Hospital, the 62-year-old was pronounced dead just before midnight that night. Mountain, who later pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility and was handed an indefinite hospital order, had not been seen by mental health services for 148 days before the attack.
