A public schoolboy who claimed he was sleepwalking when he attacked two students and a teacher with hammers can now be named.
It comes after a judge lifted an order preventing the identification of 17-year-old Thomas Wei Huang, who is from Malaysia.
Last week, he was detained for life with a minimum term of 12 years after he was found guilty of three charges of attempted murder in June following a 10-week trial.
He was dressed only in his boxer shorts when he repeatedly hit his dormmates as they slept in one of the boarding houses at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon, in June last year.
Both boys suffered skull fractures, as well as injuries to their ribs, spleen, a punctured lung and internal bleeding. He then attacked a teacher who attempted to intervene.
Maths teacher Henry Roffe-Silvester said at trial he was asleep in his own quarters when he was awoken by noises coming from the boarding house and went to investigate.
He told a jury he saw a silhouetted figure standing in front of him in the room who then turned and repeatedly hit him over the head with a hammer.
“Physically I stumbled backwards into the corridor. There was a second blow – I can’t remember if it was before I stumbled back – that’s a little bit hazy for me,” said Mr Roffe-Silvester, who suffered six blows to the head.
The teenager, who was 16 at the time, admitted carrying out the attacks but said he was sleepwalking. He denied three charges of attempted murder on the basis he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
But the court was told he had an obsession with the killing of children and hammers, which he said he kept by his bed for “protection” from the “zombie apocalypse”.
Prosecutors said the boy armed himself with three claw hammers and waited for the two boys to be asleep before attacking them.
Huang can be named after a court official confirmed his lawyers would not be appealing the judge’s earlier decision to lift the reporting restriction, which was made at the sentencing hearing following an application by the PA news agency.
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