An 11-year-old girl was beaten to death by her great-uncle hours after a family member called a mental health crisis team asking them to help him, a court has heard.
Delroy Forrester, 51, has admitted killing his great-niece Jasmine Forrester, but denies murdering her on the basis he was “legally insane” at the time.
Jurors at Wolverhampton crown court were told on Monday that Forrester launched “a frenzied and sustained attack” on Jasmine and used a broken table leg to inflict 100 injuries on her.
The court heard that hours before the attack the defendant’s daughter, Tyler Forrester, called the crisis team at Penn hospital in Wolverhampton, which provides mental health services, to ask for help.
When asked if her father was at risk, she said he was not. Hospital staff said they could not provide help in those circumstances, to which she replied: “You’d better make sure he doesn’t kill my nan tonight.”
Opening the case against Forrester, the prosecutor, Jonathan Rees QC, said: “In the early hours of Friday 9 February 2018, Jasmine was the subject of a frenzied and sustained attack by the defendant, in the course of which he used a broken table leg to inflict [...] catastrophic head injuries.
“The defendant does not dispute that he killed Jasmine in the way alleged. However, he has pleaded not guilty to the allegation of murder on the basis that he was, in the legal sense, insane at the time he assaulted her and inflicted the fatal head injuries.”
Rees said that following the attack, while the defendant was being held by police, he started to sing phrases such as “You are the lord my God”.
“An officer asked whether the child was safe and the defendant responded by singing that the child wasn’t safe and he was a bad man. He added that ‘the devil had to die, I kill her, blud’ and ‘the devil is dead’,” said Rees.
The court heard that Forrester claimed to be devastated by what he had done to Jasmine. The prosecutor said: “He spoke of her being pure and innocent, and said that his son, Myles, had tricked him into thinking that Jasmine was the devil, whereas, in fact, Myles was the devil.”
The trial continues.
