Ashby followed a Sikh woman home in Walsall last October. Because of her head covering, he was convinced that she was a Muslim. He attacked her in her house, strangled and raped her. During the crime, he constantly bombarded her with Islamophobic insults. Finally, he ran away from the house because he was frightened by the noises from the street.
The police caught the man after three days of searching. When the investigators then showed him a photo of his victim, he asked incomprehensibly why he did not have a Muslim headscarf, a hijab, as the BBC server recalled.
Ashby, who pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday, was in a psychiatric hospital before the attack. “When admitted to the psychiatric intensive care unit on September 5, you suffered from psychosis. You heard voices, believed that others could control and read your thoughts, and suffered from paranoid and persecutory delusions,” Judge Edward Pepperall quoted Ashby’s diagnosis, according to the Independent website.
The court also justified the sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum length of stay behind bars of 14 years due to the considerable number of offenses he had committed in the past. “You have previously been convicted of carrying weapons, criminal damage to property, assault, theft, drug possession, harassment and violation of a restraining order,” reminded the judge.
Ashby was released from the hospital on October 22, three days before the attack, but while he was leaving, the man managed to attack one of the medics and threatened him with death. “You are solely responsible for your actions,” Pepperall concluded.
