A 25 year old American accused of having stabbed and beaten a married couple whom he did not know and of having wanted to eat the husband’s face after the attack he will not go to prison for life but to a psychiatric hospital, thanks to an agreement between the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense.
austin harrouff pleaded insanity in pleading not guilty to the deaths of John Stevens and Michelle Mishcon Stevens, 59 and 53 years old, respectively, who were in the garage of their home in Tequesta (Florida) when in August 2016 the young man entered and attacked them for no apparent reason.
The judge in the case, Sherwood Bauer, from Martin County (eastern Florida), accepted the declaration of insanity and the agreement of the Prosecutor and the defense, which prevented the continuation of a trial whose oral hearing began this Monday.
Harrouff could have been sentenced to life in prison without the right to probation on the two counts of the murder of the Stevens and one of the attempted murder of one of the deceased couple’s neighbors, Jeff Fisher, who appeared at the scene upon hearing the screams of the victims Fisher survived the injuries inflicted on him by Harrouff.
He was in the middle of an acute psychotic episode and thought he was half man, half dog.
Before the fierce attack, Harrouff had dinner with his family at a restaurant in Jupiter (East Florida), but at one point he got up and went to his mother’s house, where she found him and took him back to the family dinner, although he argued with his father and left the place again, as recorded in security videos.
(Also read: Andepetrol trade unionist and his nephew are murdered in La Guajira).
When police went to the Stevens’ home, alerted by neighbors, Harrouff, then a 19-year-old student at Florida State University, he was half naked and biting into the face of John Stevens. According to police reports, police were only able to remove him from Stevens’s body using a taser, a trained dog and the force of three officers.
Harrouff told officers that a demon was chasing him and he was trying to run away. In the first phase of the investigation after the murders, the Police handled the thesis that Harrouff had consumed a synthetic drug known as ‘flakka’, but no trace of that substance was found in his blood. Doctors who testified before the oral phase of the trial on the young man’s behalf said he was in the midst of an “acute” psychotic episode and thought he was “half man, half dog” when he attacked the couple.
Some relatives of the victims present this Monday at the trial expressed their disagreement with the judge’s decision, according to local media reports. Harrouff He will remain in the Martin County Jail until he is transferred to an institution for the mentally ill.from which you will not be able to leave without a court order.
The trial of Austin Harrouff, the FSU student accused of killing and biting a couples face off in 2016 is set to begin at 9 am in Martin County. This will be a no jury trial – the judge will decide if he’ll get life in prison or go to a mental health facility. @WPBF25News pic.twitter.com/ZzE03Z3Xtk
— Jossie Carbonare WPBF25 (@wpbf_jossie) November 28, 2022
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EFE
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