An epileptic son stabbed his retired detective stepfather to death while 'having a seizure' and 'out of it', his mother told a court today. Ben Moglione, 23, killed Andrew McDiarmid, 64, who was isolating in his bedroom after testing positive for Covid.
After all, people have tried the 'sleepwalking' excuse.
Her usually 'calm and placid' son, who was studying chemical engineering at university, came into the bathroom soon afterwards and started washing blood off his hands.
Mrs Moglione, a senior civil servant, told jurors he was 'out of it.'
And who'd know more about being 'out of it' than a senior civil servant?
Yeh … No.
ReplyDeleteWhilst there are many different types of epileptic fit (most assume the ‘classic’ tonic/clonic, tonic/atonic or myoclonic types they’ve seen in the films/TV shows are all there are).
There 'are' the ‘rarer’ Absence, Focal Aware, and (what is being claimed here) Focal Impaired Awareness type seizures too.
FIAS ‘can’ result in confusion, lack of (i.e. hearing but not) understanding resulting in (if the person is shouted at) an assumption they are being attacked, and an aggressive response. Followed by a “post ictal” period of further confusion, and not all remember even having the fit.
But … we’re talking about a family who will have had extensive experience and knowledge of how to manage his fits. Also, whilst “aggression” takes many forms, it ‘doesn’t’ usually include coordinated and premeditated complex actions (like having or locating a knife, then using it, especially in a sustained attack – I can find no other reported equivalent episode recorded) … unless (like I keep saying about alcohol “being drunk doesn’t make you violent, it merely lowers the mask, to reveal the truth”) he was (crucially) already an aggressive and violent person to begin with.
Those with epilepsy ‘can’ act in a remarkably different than normal manner, but … they don’t become radically different people (how they react when shouted at aggressively, is how they'll act when they, confused, 'think' that is happening). So, if anyone bothers to check, I can almost guarantee there are other instances of violence (definitely to include carrying, threatening with and using a knife) in his background (and probably, purely coincidentally I’m sure, some ‘difficulties’ with his father).
So for the (usual LI idiots out there) ‘all’ epileptics are not such a threat, just the ars*holes (just like the non-epileptic versions).
"There 'are' the ‘rarer’ Absence, Focal Aware, and (what is being claimed here) Focal Impaired Awareness type seizures too."
ReplyDeleteYes, they don't get mentioned as often in the media, do they?