A man with a significant criminal history who randomly stabbed two young Burger King employees - including a 16-year-old who needed life-saving surgery - had been suffering methamphetamine-induced psychosis.
The symptoms, including voices and delusions, have persisted to the point where the man continues over a year later to be treated for schizophrenia.
The diagnosis of defendant Ethan Simon, 27, was discussed at length during two subsequent hearings over the past two weeks as Manukau District Court Judge Janey Forrest considered what sentence would be appropriate for someone dangerous to the community but with persistent cognitive and mental health disabilities that make prison a less-than-ideal solution.
The judge settled on an end sentence of three years and nine months’ imprisonment - down significantly from the 11 years and nine months he would have faced without any reductions. Her sentence announcement was paired with criticism that the mental health and criminal justice systems had let Simon down in the past.
“It is my genuine hope that when you are considered for parole a plan for your reintegration into the community ... is put in place,” she said, adding that such a plan “clearly did not occur” last time he was sentenced in 2022.
Simon was most recently arrested in April last year, immediately after the knife attack inside the Takanini restaurant.
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His first victim, the 16-year-old, was working in the public area of the Burger King that Sunday afternoon when Simon walked in armed with a knife and attacked without saying a word. After the initial stabs, he pushed the youth backwards then continued to stab after he fell to the floor.
As the victim yelled out and moaned in pain, other employees who were already behind the counter and in the kitchen area were alerted to the commotion. Not long afterwards, Simon walked away from the teen and headed towards the door before backtracking and deciding to jump over the counter.
“Open the till!” he demanded of a 17-year-old employee after approaching him and several others, including the manager on duty.
“The defendant then lunged forward at [the 17-year-old] and stabbed him on his chest,” the agreed summary of facts for the case states. “[The teen employee] went down to the floor in pain. The other employees fled through the rear exit.”
Simon then pointed the knife at the manager.
“I want the money. Give me the money or I’m going to stab him,” he demanded of her, referring to the already bleeding 17-year-old.
He repeated the threat, appearing “very angry and serious”, when the manager didn’t immediately respond. The manager went to the till and entered the wrong codes to distract Simon as the 17-year-old fled through the back exit, authorities said.
“If you stab me you get nothing,” the manager told him. “I know the codes and nobody else does.”
The defendant left the restaurant after rifling through the drawers. He was arrested a short time later after a bystander followed him to his home, about 500 metres from the restaurant, and called police.
He would later report to psychiatric staff and his lawyer that he had no memory of the incident. But he accepted it was him after being shown CCTV of what had occurred.
Simon was initially charged with causing grievous bodily harm to the 16-year-old and assaulting a 17-year-old employee with a knife with intent to rob him. Both charges are punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment. He pleaded guilty to the wounding of the 16-year-old but the robbery charge involving the older teen was replaced with a guilty plea to injuring with intent to injure, which carries a maximum possible sentence of five years.
During the first half of the sentencing hearing, which took place last week, Crown prosecutor Katie Karpik agreed there should be some consideration given to the defendant’s cognitive disabilities but emphasised the “vulnerability of a young man attacked in his place of work” and pointed to the defendant’s extensive criminal history.
He had 44 previous convictions, resulting in six previous sentences of imprisonment. They included violent offences such as aggravated robbery and assault with intent to rob, she noted.
Simon’s case is unusual because methamphetamine psychosis is usually temporary, defence lawyer Emma Priest told the judge. In addition to the mental illness, he suffers from social anxiety and his IQ puts him at a “borderline” mental disability, she said.
Priest acknowledged that her client was on bail for another charge - a road rage fight and theft in a carpark - when the Burger King incident occurred. But Simon has “never really been able to access support in the community”, which “set him up to fail”, she argued.
“There was an inevitability of reoffending as a result of state failure,” Priest contended.
She described her client as having been “incredibly affected” when he learned what he had done.
“He’s been particularly affected by their age,” Priest said. “He’s deeply shameful and sad about the harm he’s caused them.”
Judge Forrest announced her decision, and the reasoning behind it, during a follow-up hearing on Thursday. Simon’s use of a weapon was a “serious aggravating factor” but, somewhat unusually, it didn’t necessarily show premeditation, she said.
“You were hearing voices,” the judge explained. “You carried the knife because of the paranoia you had.”
Auckland fire crews are battling two major fires across the city, including one in a building that houses a petrol station and a fast food restaurant. ...
Judge Forrest settled on an initial starting point of nine years - one year less than the Crown has sought and one year more than the eight years suggested by the defence - for the attack on the 16-year-old. She added two years and three months in combined uplifts for the attack on the other teen worker and for the unrelated carpark fight, which involved hitting the victim over the head with pliers and kicking his head after he fell to the ground.
But she then allowed a 30% reduction for his limited cognitive ability, which she found to have played a role in his offending even if he didn’t meet the legal requirements for not guilty by reason of insanity.
Three months were then added to the sentence for his criminal history and having committed the crime while on bail. But that was offset by a number of additional discounts: 5% for how his cognitive deficits and mental health issues might make his time in prison more difficult, 20% for his troubled childhood, 5% for remorse and the standard 25% for his guilty pleas.
None of Simon’s victims attended either hearing, although another young person who gave first aid outside the restaurant did attend and was commended by the judge.
One of the teens submitted a victim impact statement to the court but it was not read aloud. Judge Forrest said only that it told of a “long and gruelling recovery”.
The Burger King where the attack took place was damaged in a major fire just three months later. It never reopened.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.