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Dropout held indefinitely for knife attack on father
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent1 Sep 2008
A university dropout who stabbed his father hours after he was sent home by psychiatrists was ordered to be detained in hospital indefinitely today.
Jack Archer, 24, plunged a seven-inch kitchen knife between his father's shoulder blades at the family home in Muswell Hill.
Earlier doctors at the Whittington Hospital had given him "a clean bill of health", the Old Bailey was told, despite his complaints of panic attacks and heart palpitations.
Psychiatrists now say Archer had developed paranoid schizophrenia after years of smoking powerful skunk cannabis.
He believed his architect father Ian, 57, was head of a secret organisation capable of giving him a heart attack with radio waves.
Archer was cleared of attempted murder in June by reason of insanity and today Judge Paul Focke ordered he should be detained under the Mental Health Act.
The court heard Archer quit Brighton University in 2004 suffering from depression and paranoia. He had gone to the hospital about six times.
On 26 September last year he was taken there by his mother Barbara but discharged with a clean bill of health. He later returned but was given a "frosty reception" at A&E. He left feeling "anxious" and minutes after returning home attacked his father.
Mrs Archer said: "I saw Jack with one of my kitchen knives. He raised both arms up in the air and with both hands on the knife he brought it down into Ian's back."
