A ‘DELUSIONAL’ cannabis user bit off a nursing assistant’s thumb in a mental health unit, a court heard.
Dean Taylor, aged 47, was taken to the unit after he was arrested at the Ibis Hotel, in Barlborough, Chesterfield, where he was found in a ‘very confused and distressed’ state.
Sheffield Crown Court heard a psychiatrist had assessed him as ‘delusional’ on the day of his arrest.
On Taylor’s admittance to a mental health unit, he was described as ‘intimidating and aggressive’.
David Wain, prosecuting, said he was ‘shouting and behaving aggressively and violent like an animal’.
He grabbed a nurse’s throat and headbutted her and, when staff tried to restrain him, Taylor bit the tip of the care assistant’s thumb off.
Taylor was found not guilty of assaulting three mental health workers on the grounds that he was insane at the time.
But he was given a hospital order and a restriction order, to protect the public, after the court heard his ‘serious’ use of cannabis was at the root of his behaviour.
Mr Wain said cannabis would not be available to him in hospital but he could obtain it in the community.
The court heard Taylor, of Wathwood Hospital, near Rotherham, was suffering from bi-polar disorder and had become increasingly worse in recent years.
Dermot Hughes, defending Taylor, said he had no memory of the incident.
The jury at Sheffield decided Taylor was suffering from a ‘disease of the mind’ at the time of the attacks and found him not guilty of the assaults.