Attempted murder at Blundell’s School: Boy found guilty of beating to death two sleeping pupils and the caretaker of a private boarding school

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A boy has been found guilty of attempted murder after attacking two sleeping students and a teacher with hammers in a devastating rampage at a private school in the middle of the night.

The 16-year-old was wearing only boxer shorts when he killed the two boys and a tutor at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had claimed he was sleepwalking during the horrific incident on June 9 last year and kept the weapons in his room for fear of a “zombie apocalypse”.

After a trial lasting more than a month at Exeter Crown Court, a jury found the boy, now 17, guilty on Friday of three counts of attempted murder.

Prosecutor James Dawes KC had described to the court how the boy climbed up to his victims, who were sleeping in hut beds, and then hit them on the head, arms and back with a hammer.

“These blows have shattered their skulls,” said Mr Dawes.

After the caretaker, Henry Roffe-Silvester, was awakened by the noise, he went into the bedroom before he too was hit on the head with a hammer.

“Mr Roffe-Silvester retreated down the corridor while the defendant repeatedly struck him in the face and head with the hammer,” said Mr Dawes.

A paramedic who responded to the attack described the bedroom as a scene from a horror movie.

A colleague added: “I served in Iraq and have never seen such a carnage, with blood all over the desks, the walls and the beds.”

Both boys attacked suffered broken bones and will have to live with the “long-term consequences” of the attack, Dawes said, but added that they could not remember the incident.

The defendant, who did not respond to questions during police interviews, told the jury that he was unconscious at the time of the attack.

In his testimony before the jury, he said he remembered going to sleep before the attack and then seeing the dormitory covered in blood.

“I couldn’t remember anything, so my only rational thought was that I was sleepwalking,” he said.

Expert Dr Mark Pressman also described the attack on Mr Roffe-Silvester as “a textbook example of sleepwalking violence” and said the case showed no characteristics inconsistent with sleepwalking.

And relatives of the defendant also reported to the court cases of sleepwalking in their family.

However, the jury had heard that the boy had used his iPad immediately before the attacks and only reached their verdict after 40 hours of deliberation.

Concluding his prosecution, Mr Dawes said a police investigation had revealed an obsession by the defendant with hammers and one of the boys.

“It may not be palatable and it may not make much sense, but it seems to be an obsession he was pursuing,” he said.

At Blundell’s School, which opened in 1604, parents pay up to £30,000 in annual fees for full boarding accommodation for pupils.

Among his former students was Archibald V. Hill, who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and who also helped rescue thousands of academics from Nazi-ruled Europe.

On Friday, trial judge Mrs Justice Cutts said she would adjourn sentencing to prepare pre-sentence reports, including a psychiatric report, and would deliver judgment on October 18.

Detective Inspector Dave Egan of Devon and Cornwall Police welcomed the jury’s verdict and thanked the paramedics who arrived at the incident and provided “life-saving” assistance to the injured.

He added: “The attacks were brutal and cruel and I believe his intention was to kill.”

“Our investigators have worked tirelessly to prove that the perpetrator was actually fully conscious when he carried out this gruesome, pre-planned attack.”