WThe family of Roger Leadbeater, a 74-year-old man stabbed to death while walking his dog from his home in Sheffield, have come to the scene two days after the horrific sight.
“Nobody cleaned up the scene. It was the most savage thing I’ve ever seen,” Angela Hector told her granddaughter. “There was blood everywhere.” You could see the dog’s footprints, body shape. It was horrible. The dog walker stopped talking to me, and his dog was licking Roger’s blood.”
The lead family covered a large sheet of tarpaulin with blood and sat there for more than five hours until the police in South Yorkshire managed to clean it up.
The force apologized to the family for the incident, which they reported was due to a mix-up between the police and the local council, and said protocols had been updated to prevent it from happening again.
Hector, 55, and his family just discovered this was one of a series of mistakes and miscommunications surrounding Leadbeater’s death on August 9 last year, and with an inquest into his death due to start on Monday, they say they know why. so he erred.
He was killed by Emma Borowy, a 32-year-old woman with serious mental health problems who had left a six-bed psychiatric intensive care unit in Bolton two days before the murder. It is said that Leadbeater was stabbed more than 50 times, including through the eye and several times in the back as he tried to crawl away.
Borowy was charged with murder and remanded in prison awaiting trial, and later died in custody on December 12.
When Leadbeater’s family began to piece together his story, and that he had taken her to a public park near his home in the evening, he unsettlingly discovered a series of events which suggested that the danger to himself and others had not been properly assessed.
Borowy, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and frequently talked about hearing voices, had left the hospital several times, sometimes by breaking the windows of the ward itself, sometimes by fleeing officers on leave. He is known to have shown threats and aggression towards staff, and to have refused medication.
At one point, the police took her back to the hospital and she allegedly talked to the officers about wanting to kill people and “bleeding”, although she later denied it.
He ran away while on supervised leave on August 4, 2023, was returned to the hospital by police, and three days later, on August 7, he was admitted to supervised care again. She left while assisting a courier who was watching over her to buy a shop and visit a friend in Sheffield and travel.
He went on to kill Leadbeater on the night of September 9, with CCTV footage showing him pacing the area and hiding in the bushes shortly before the attack.
Hector said: “Roger was just a nice, hardworking guy. He did not want to harm anyone, and what he suffered and killed that night could have been prevented. Among the various responsibilities was the master’s performance – if they had done this, if they had done that.
“It seems like he’s getting very poor treatment and care.
“Again on August 7, permission was never granted. We do not even ask for new policies to be put in place; we want to follow the ones we already have. They are there for a reason – to protect individuals and to protect others from harm – but soon they did not follow them.
Leadbeater was well known in the suburb of Westfield where he lived. He drives smaller children with special needs to and from school, takes care of his beloved dogs, and is obsessed with gadgets.
“He never married, he had no children – he was busy with our lot,” said Hector eagerly, who he loved with his nieces and nephews, children and grandchildren. “We are a big family. He always came.”
Lindsey Hammond, 36, his great-granddaughter, said: “We thought he had a bit of a secret life – that was just us – and we found out we all knew. He talked to everyone and told everyone a story about him.”
The family is supported by Julian Hendy, who set up the Hundred Families charity after his father was killed by a man with psychosis who was known to mental health services in 2007.
“There’s a whole catalog of mistakes, this story,” he said. “There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. There are obviously issues with risk assessments, medication monitoring and passing on information, and these issues come up again and again.
“This is not about general people with mental health problems; There is a small number of people who are diagnosed as being dangerous and who need care and treatment.
Hector said: “It changed our whole family – it changed the perspective of things, the way we look at services, the way we look at everything.
“People said Roger was just at the wrong time. No, he was in the right place, where he had always walked his dog for years, and he didn’t have to face what he had done that night.
“In Roger’s name, we want justice, whatever it looks like in this case – they were wrong and they can’t deny that.”
Dr Arasu Kuppuswamy, chief medical officer at the Greater Manchester mental health NHS foundation, said in a statement: “Our thoughts and sympathies remain with the family of Roger Leadbeater following his tragic death. We are unable to comment further until the coroner’s inquest has concluded.
A spokesman for Greater Manchester said: “We understand the impact of Roger’s death on his family and loved ones. We are all interested in getting the answers they deserve in the coming inquest.
“We know that it will be a matter for us and other partner institutions to be properly accounted for. We are committed to making sure we do everything we can to be part of a full and intrepid investigation into the death of Roger Coroner.
A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police said: “We are continuing to mourn Roger’s family and continue to support the investigation process.”