MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti) – A murder suspect, institutionalized for evaluation of his competency to stand trial, bludgeoned a homicide suspect to death with a nightstand drawer, Russian investigators said Thursday.
The attacker, a 32-year-old resident of the far-eastern city of Blagoveshchensk, had been taken to a psychiatric hospital in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan after he fatally stabbed an acquaintance in March when the two were going for a walk, investigators said.
The suspect said he stabbed his drunken companion in the neck with a self-made knife for being too loud.
Because the suspect was a patient at a drug abuse clinic in his home city, a psychiatric evaluation was ordered to decide whether he was mentally fit to stand trial.
“While in a hospital ward, the man hit a sleeping patient with a drawer that he had taken out of a nightstand,” Bashkiria investigators said in a statement.
The 27-year-old victim died immediately. He had been in the psych ward amid charges of negligently inflicting body harm that caused death.
The judge ruled on Thursday, citing the results of the psychological examination, that the attacker should undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment rather than stand trial.