A man who knifed a father-of-three 27 times on the victim’s front lawn after subjecting his neighbours to years of threatening and abusive behaviour has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 38 years.
Gatekeepers News reports that Can Arslan, 52, lay in wait for 43-year-old Matthew Boorman and attacked him as he returned home from work on the afternoon of October 5 2021.
The murder was the culmination of 12 years of threats from Arslan to Mr Boorman and other neighbours in Walton Cardiff, near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, which began with a row over parking.
Many had installed expensive security systems in response to Arslan’s aggression, and the killing was captured in graphic detail.
Mr Boorman’s wife Sarah also suffered a deep wound to her leg as she tried to pull the defendant off her husband.
Arslan then forced his way into the home of another resident, Peter Marsden, and knifed him eight times, although he survived the attack.
Just the day before the killing, Arslan had told a police officer he would murder his neighbour.
Arslan admitted the attempted murder of Mr Marsden, causing grievous bodily harm to Mrs Boorman, and a charge of affray, but denied murder.
Instead, he claimed the charge he should face for killing Mr Boorman was manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
At trial in April, the jury heard Arslan was not in the grip of psychosis, but had been diagnosed with a personality disorder.
It manifested itself in extreme anger and aggression to perceived insults, making grandiose claims about himself and an exaggerated sense of his own importance.
The prosecution said despite having a personality that lay outside of what is normal, Arslan was fully in control of himself and knew the difference between right and wrong.
The defence argued Arslan’s personality disorder is in itself an abnormality of mental function and therefore provided a defence to murder.
He was unanimously convicted of murder.
Justice Cutts, while handing him a life sentence with a minimum of 38 years on Thursday, said: “On that afternoon, for no reason at all, you took the life of a decent family man, robbed his children of their father, his wife of her husband, and his mother and siblings of a much-loved son and brother.”
