There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the interface between our justice system and mental health authorities when a mentally ill killer, who stabbed a retired man to death as he was out walking his dog, is released after less than four years’ treatment.

Now the victim’s family have spoken of their heartbreak after claiming they’ve been told that his killer is being allowed to walk the streets.

Retired butcher Lewis Stone, 71, was walking his dog on the banks of the Leri, near Borth Wild Animal Kingdom, on holiday in Borth on 28 February 2019 when he was stabbed three times by David Kenneth Fleet.

Mr Stone – from Burton-on Trent with a holiday home in the area that he had hoped to retire to — died three months later from his injuries.

In September 2019, Mr Fleet, who at the time of the stabbing was living in Borth, was sectioned under the mental health act.

At sentencing, Judge Paul Thomas said Mr Fleet would not be released until a Ministry of Justice board determined he was no longer a threat, adding that “public safety will be the highest priority”. Mr Fleet, then 20, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, claiming he launched the attack as otherwise the voices in his head would kill him.

Now 23, he had been held at the Caswell Clinic medium secure mental health unit in Bridgend. He had, before the stabbing, been assessed by mental health services in Ceredigion as being suitable for treatment in the community.

By its very nature, paranoid schizophrenia is a condition that can be treated with medication. But it is also a condition that when the medication is working, the patient sees little need to continue those meds.

What safeguards are in place to ensure another family won’t be put through the pain and suffering endured by the Stones?

We would hope that in such sad cases as is this, justice will be done — and be seen to be done. In this instance, it hasn’t.

It seems that releasing this patient back into society is a gamble that over-worked and under-funded mental health professionals deem acceptable.

We hope that they are right. But we shouldn’t have to hope.