King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Wednesday, August 11

Motorway madness

I was going to do a fun post today, but last night I saw a documentary on something that was first shown on TV 2 years ago on the BBC's "Motorway Cops." What they couldn't say then was this was the tip of the iceberg, and last night they filled in the rest of the story.
People with mental illness are a terrible shame, because they aren't acknowledged immediately and can end up doing significant harm to themselves. And this show highlighted something else that is exceptionally rare, with an even worse mental condition called Induced Delusional Disorder. The two Swedish girls, Ursula and Sabine, are identical twins. Ursula has a severe mental health issue, namely paranoid schizophrenia, and is the first girl to run out into the path of the truck. Sabine, more remarkably, is purely influenced by her thoughts, and copies her, running out in front of a Polo. Ursula is badly injured, with many compound fractures of both her legs, but Sabine it would appear, isn't. She gets up, has a fight with a woman copper, then gets into the opposing lane where she tries to repeat her suicidal dash for another car. This time, she fails, but the Police are forced to restrain her and she screams like a banshee whilst they move her back to the other side of the road. Both are convinced they're there to take away their organs (!) and both are asking them to call the Police. Ursula spends 5 days in hospital, Sabine is realised 2 hours later where she is arrested for trespass on the motorway and assaulting a Police officer.
What happens the next day is even stranger however. She's wandering around Stoke on Trent aimlessly, when two blokes offer to help her. She says she's looking for a B&B to stay in, because her sister's in the hospital nearby. The two men take up the roles of good Samaritans, and one of them takes her home so she can get cleaned up etc. Whilst cooking her something to eat, she stabs him, killing him within minutes. She's later found by a member of the public with a large lump hammer, and is seen beating herself over the head with it and bleeding profusely. He manages to subdue her and again she is arrested. The link with the stabbing is made, and she is interviewed, but "no comments" the entire interview. She's later convicted of murder on grounds of diminished responsibility and is sentenced to 5 years in a secure mental health unit.
The most staggering thing about the entire case however is that as she's disconnected from her sister, she shows more and more normality. She now isn't even listed as a mental health patient, and was purely taking on the role that her genuinely ill sibling was portraying. She'll be out soon enough, and presumably will hook up with her sister again, where it could happen again.
I would say enjoy, but this is one of those times I can't.