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Skunk abuse made me stab youth, says killer
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent20 Mar 2009
A YOUNG father made paranoid by years of smoking powerful cannabis has admitted killing a teenager he had never met before.
Imran Khan, 21, admitted the manslaughter of 17-year-old Devoe Roach, from Stoke Newington, but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Khan, who suffers from paranoid psychosis, knifed Mr Roach through the heart less than a minute after meeting him at Stamford Hill, thinking Mr Roach was watching him.
Psychiatrist Dr Mark Lyall told the Old Bailey how Khan was in the "grip of a major psychiatric episode" at the time, in March last year, the result of a genetic pre-disposition to mental health problems and regular heavy use of skunk cannabis.
Khan, who armed himself with a knife when he left the house, told the psychiatrist he smoked cannabis from the age of 12.
Jurors heard he saw the world through a "paranoid filter", heard voices in his head and believed people were out to kill him.
Khan, who is married with a young daughter, had left his wife "petrified by his erratic behaviour", the court heard.
The trial continues.
