Girl, 11, killed by great-uncle hours after hospital crisis team decided he was ‘not a risk’

A young schoolgirl was battered to death with a table leg by her “mentally ill” great-uncle just hours after a hospital crisis team said it could not help him because he was “not a risk”, a court heard.

Delroy Forrester admitted killing 11-year-old Jasmine Forrester in an attack on February 9 which left her with almost 100 “catastrophic” injuries before insisting “the devil had to die”.

The jury heard how the 51-year-old’s daughter, Tyler Forrester, was angry her father was not in hospital and had called the crisis team at Penn Hospital in Wolverhampton hours before the incident to ask for help.

The hospital is a major provider of metal health services.

After saying they could not assist her father, Ms Forrester said: “You’d better make sure he doesn’t kill my nan tonight.”

Jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court were told that Forrester had in fact wanted to kill his son Myles, and was later heard speaking of Jasmine as being “pure and innocent”.

Police had been called to the house of the defendant’s mother and Jasmine’s great-grandmother, Victoria Forrester, in Kent Road, Wolverhampton, in the early hours after the 79-year-old raised the alarm with her neighbour.

Forrester, formerly of Lower Villiers Street in Blakenhall, denies murdering Jasmine on the basis he was “legally insane” at the time of the killing.

Opening the case against Forrester on Monday, prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC said: “In the early hours of Friday February 9 2018, Jasmine was the subject of a frenzied and sustained attack by the defendant, in the course of which he used a broken table leg to inflict… catastrophic head injuries.

“The defendant does not dispute that he killed Jasmine in the way alleged.

“However, he has pleaded not guilty to the allegation of murder on the basis that he was, in the legal sense, insane at the time he assaulted her and inflicted the fatal head injuries.”

Mr Rees continued: “(Tyler) Forrester was angry that her father had not been taken to hospital and so she contacted the Crisis Team at Penn Hospital at 9.13pm (on February 8).

“They asked her if her father was at risk and she said ‘No’.

“They indicated that in those circumstances there was nothing they could do, in response to which she said in anger ‘You’d better make sure he doesn’t kill my nan tonight’.”

Speaking of Forrester’s actions after the attack, Mr Rees said: “While the defendant was being held (by officers) outside, he started singing phrases such as ‘You are the Lord my God…’.

“An officer asked whether the child was safe and the defendant responded by singing that the child wasn’t safe and he was a bad man.

“He added that ‘the devil had to die, I kill her blud’ and ‘the devil is dead’.”

Speaking of how Forrester felt after the incident, Mr Rees said: “He stated he felt devastated by what he had done to Jasmine.

“He spoke of her being pure and innocent, and said that his son, Myles, had tricked him into thinking that Jasmine was the devil whereas, in fact, Myles was the devil.”

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