A York man will be sentenced for stabbing an elderly American tourist outside a hotel in the city after a jury found he did the act.
Matthew McPherson, 25, crept up behind Larry Welshans and stabbed him with a kitchen knife near The Moxby hotel in Peasholme Green in what was a random, motiveless attack.
Due to McPherson’s mental-health issues, he was deemed unfit to stand trial and so a jury was empanelled in the defendant’s absence to determine whether he did the act alleged.
The jury found that McPherson did the act, namely wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
McPherson was also charged with carrying two kitchen knives at the time of the attack and the jury also found that he did those acts.
Prosecutor Philip Standfast said that victim Mr Welshans and his wife were staying at The Moxy hotel in Black Horse Lane at the time of the attack in October last year.
Mr Welshans, who was in his 70s, woke early at about 5am on 9 October and went outside for a cigarette while his wife got ready for their departure to London.
Having forgotten the key to get back inside the hotel, he remained sitting at a picnic table and was playing games on his phone, waiting for his wife to let him back in, when two ambulancemen approached him and asked him if he’d seen a “bloke” they were looking for.
Mr Welshans said he hadn’t seen any such “bloke”.
Curiously, Mr Standfast said the search for this individual was not necessarily linked to the attack which was about to befall the unsuspecting American tourist.
He said it was at this point, as the ambulancemen were heading back towards the hotel, that Mr Welshans felt somebody grab him from behind. He then felt “what he thought was a fist” to his stomach as if he had been punched.
Mr Standfast said that it was Mr McPherson who delivered that blow, which turned out to be a stab with a knife.
McPherson, from Dunnington, said “sorry” to the victim then ran up the street towards the ambulancemen and said: “Help, he’s been stabbed.”
The ambulancemen turned back towards the stricken tourist who was bleeding. He was taken to hospital and gave a description of the man who had attacked him.
Mr Welshans, who was in a “great deal of pain”, was treated at Leeds General Infirmary and thankfully survived the attack.
One of the ambulancemen said that he saw McPherson leave his bicycle at a bike rack next to the hotel, then saw him running past shouting “something like ‘he’s stabbed himself, help, help, ambulance’”.
He said the man had a knife in his hand which he threw into the road. He described the man as being “agitated and hyped up”.
He said that Mr Welshans had an injury to his torso and stomach and a cut to his right leg, so he put a dressing on the wound to stem the bleeding. He later gave police a description of the attacker.
A police officer saw a man matching that description walking along Barbican Road later that morning and followed McPherson in his vehicle.
The officer got out of his vehicle and approached McPherson who said that “he was the person they were looking for, and he was going to Fulford Road Police Station”.
As he was arrested, Mr McPherson asked “if the guy was okay”.
During a search, police found two black-handled kitchen knives on McPherson.
A subsequent forensic examination of the knives showed a DNA match to the “flesh and blood” of Mr Welshans, providing clear evidence that he had been stabbed with one of those blades.
Mr Standfast said that during police questioning, McPherson, of Sawyers Walk, “wasn’t denying what he had done”, but claimed that because of his (mental) disabilities”, he “wasn’t conscious of what he had done”.
Judge Sean Morris adjourned sentence for the compilation of further reports on McPherson on Thursday, including a psychiatric report. The case will next be mentioned on 18 May.
