Schizophrenic escapee posed as supply teacher in region's schools

Lewis Alexander Mawhinney, 26, who suffers from schizophrenia, was sentenced to indefinite detention by a Belfast court in 2008 after attacking a work colleague in a lift at the call centre where they both worked.

However, he escaped from his psychiatric ward in November and had been missing until last week, when it was discovered that he had been acting as a German supply teacher in a French secondary school and lycée (six-form college).

He started teaching at the school, near to Digne-les-Bains, on the 3rd of January. Not long after his arrival, his colleagues became suspicious after he made claims that he belonged to MI-5 and began wearing gloves so he "wouldn’t leave fingerprints." The staff alerted the police, who looked into his background and discovered a murky past.

Mawhinney has been detained in various psychiatric institutions since in September 2007, when he stabbed Stephen Hayes three times in the neck, under the belief that he had been instructed by MI-6 to "find" and "deter" Hayes.

At the time of his arrest, the 26-year old Northern Ireland native and graduate of Modern Languages from Oxford University, alleged that he had been indoctrinated by MI-5 during a period he spent in Provence in 2005. He had also told his mother that she was not his mother and that he had, in fact, been swapped at birth by the Secret Service.

Dr Loughrey, the psychiatrist who examined Mawhinney prior to his trial in 2008, reported that his patient "expressed the belief that he had a diamond in his stomach," and that "at various times during his admission he has described various other grandiose delusions, including having killed people."

A spokesperson for the local education authority covering the Aix-en-Provence and Marseille area, has assured reporters from the local press that in this case "the recruitment procedure for hiring supply teachers had been met".

The British Foreign Office told the BBC that they were aware that a UK citizen had been hospitalised in France and were ready to provide consular assistance.

For more information visit www.rivieratimes.com 
 
Follow us at Facebook.com/rivieratimes or on Twitter @RivieraTimes

TD