Friday, February 04, 2011

Man who escaped from psychiatric hospital in Northern Ireland found teaching German in France

An Irishman has been fired from his teaching job in France after his employers learned he was a schizophrenic who escaped from a clinic where he was interned for a knife attack.

Lewis Alexander Mawhinney began teaching German in a high school in the southern Provence town of Digne-les-Bains last month. But suspicions were aroused when the young man started saying he was a secret agent working for Scotland Yard.

Police were alerted and discovered that the 26-year-old was found not guilty but insane by a court in Belfast, on a charge of wounding a man with a knife in 2008.

He escaped from the psychiatric hospital where he was interned and travelled to France. Officials said Mawhinney was now in a psychiatric unit in Digne-les-Bains while waiting to be sent back to Northern Ireland.

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