An Essex man who stabbed his mother six times with a kitchen knife and hit her with a metal roasting tin has been made the subject of a hospital order.

Before the attack Jack Jarman had been ranting and acting bizarrely and had dragged his mother Barbara Jarman out of their Earls Colne home into nearby fields, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

She managed to convince him to let her go and when they returned to the house he had run naked from his room screaming at her, said Stephen Rose, prosecuting.

Jarman had then gone into the kitchen where he picked up a knife and began stabbing her and hitting her with the roasting dish.

The police were called and Jarman was arrested in a field after a police dog was deployed.

During the attack Mrs Jarman was stabbed a total of six times in the back, neck, head and the back of her ear and was seriously concerned about what was going to happen to her, said Mr Rose.

He said Jarman’s mother hadn’t supported her son being prosecuted for what he did to her.

Jarman, 22, of Atlas Road, Earls Colne, admitted wounding his mother on May 31 and was made the subject of a hospital order with restriction after the court heard he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Sentencing him, Judge John Devaux said that on April 16, a few weeks before the attack on his mother, Jarman had been released from a sentence of six years youth detention for offences of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and being concerned in the supply of class A drugs.

On that occasion he had been supplying drugs and had chased after a man and stabbed him in the back after the man kicked him.

The man had suffered life threatening injuries but had recovered.

Judge Devaux said psychiatrists who had been treating him since the attack on his mother had diagnosed Jarman with paranoid schizophrenia and it was felt he would present a serious risk to the public if he suffered further acute episodes in the future.

He said Jarman was “undoubtedly a dangerous offender” and needed to be detained in hospital for treatment

Steven Dyble, for Jarman, said although his client had taken illicit substances in the days before the attack on his mother he had behaved in the way he did because of his underlying paranoid schizophrenia.