The UK’s Sheffield Crown Court has sentenced a man to 17 years in prison after he exploded in rage at his neighbor last summer, using Pokemon-branded games in a fatal assault.
swinging a bag of at least four Pokemon card tins “like a cricketer”
Andrew Hague, 31, had been smoking cannabis in August and felt insulted by his neighbor, 50-year-old Simon Wilkinson. According to witness reports and court documents, Hague went into a fit of rage and — swinging a bag of at least four Pokemon card tins “like a cricketer” — proceeded to inflict a “ferocious and brutal” assault on the neighbor.
According to the BBC, other neighbors witnessed Hague’s frenzy as he also stomped and punched Wilkinson, and beat him with a club, all of which contributed to the head and facial injuries that caused the victim’s death.
The court heard that cannabis use combined with Hague’s loosely defined mental disorder, for which he’d stopped taking pills, likely “influenced his judgement at the time of the killing.” Hague later told police he “got carried away” in his conflict with Wilkinson, but that he felt remorse for how seriously he’d injured the neighbor, and then “tried to end his life.” Wilkinson’s mother Eileen told the court that Hague was “pure evil.”
Judge Sarah Wright also recommended readmitting Hague to Rampton Secure Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital, where the court heard the Sheffield man had been responding well to treatment.