Cawdery killings: 'Change the law so no other family feels our pain'

The family of an elderly couple killed in their home by a man with a serious mental illness have said the law needs to change to prevent future tragedies.

Michael and Marjorie Cawdery died after being attacked in Portadown, County Armagh, by Thomas McEntee.

In the days before, McEntee came to the attention of police and health services but chances were missed to take him to a place of safety.

Earlier this week a coroner said the killings were "entirely preventable".

In her inquest findings Maria Dougan said the killings must serve as "a catalyst for change" in how organisations such as health trusts and the police dealt with mental health patients.

The coroner said she feared that further tragedies would occur unless more work was done.

Speaking to BBC News NI, the couple's daughter Wendy and her husband Charles Little backed the coroner's recommendations.

On the morning of the killings in May 2017, McEntee had walked naked from Bessbrook to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry.

He had been detained but not arrested before being transferred by ambulance to the emergency department of Craigavon Area Hospital in Portadown.

While he was there, he got up, left and made his way to the Cawderys' home in nearby Upper Ramone Park.

Mr Little encountered McEntee as he left the house, stealing Michael Cawdery's car.

Mr Little said a scene of confusion and horror met him inside the house.

"It immediately felt very strange," he said.

"The shopping was scattered everywhere and all the curtains were pulled.

"I suddenly looked down and realised I was looking at a rolled up carpet with Mike's feet sticking out the end.

"I unrolled the carpet and Mike was in a very bad way, if not already dead.

"I looked down the corridor and saw another rolled up carpet in exactly the same way in another doorway. I ran out and shouted to Wendy to get the police and ambulance.

"Marjorie was also clearly in a very bad way."

Despite the shock and grief the family felt, Mrs Little said it quickly became apparent that many opportunities to take McEntee off the streets had been missed but that the police and Southern Health Trust were not telling the family the full story.

"I think I was partially numb, to start," she said.

"As time went on it started to turn to anger, frustration, irritation. All sorts of negative feelings.

"Certainly a complete lack of trust in the [health] trusts."

McEntee was convicted of two counts of manslaughter by diminished responsibility but the family have continued battling for answers and change.

There have been two serious adverse incident reports compiled by the Southern Trust and this week the findings of an 11-day inquest were released.

The coroner highlighted multiple failings by police and health services in how they dealt with McEntee.

Wendy said it was an exhausting process.

"It is a very intense experience," she said of the inquest.

"You are on tenterhooks completely throughout. Your attention is directed to what's been said all the time and over 11 days that is a long time to keep attention.

"In the inquest, most of the information on the operations with the police was the hardest to listen to.

"We had had dealings with the police and were feeling reasonably confident in the information we were getting back.

"But when they got into the minutiae of what happened on each day and his interactions with the police it started to unravel somewhat and we could see that there were failings in the way they operated."

Despite their battles with public bodies, the Cawdery family has always shown a level of compassion for the turmoil McEntee was living through at that time.

"It very quickly became apparent that he had major mental health problems and he was clearly somebody that, really, his problems were such that he shouldn't be in the community," Mr Little said.

"But then you began to ask, if he was this ill, then why was he in the community? Why were people letting him out, putting him in this position where he could do this?

"You came round to the realisation that he was as much a victim in this as we were. Because he should never have been allowed to be where he was.

"I've been living on anger for six years basically. Because it's suppressed anger, it's very wearing.

"In NI every year on average there are 300 avoidable mental health deaths. Suicide, homicide and people who have been self-medicating on illegal drugs.

"These are people who were mental health patients. Year on year, on year and nothing is ever done about it."

Because of this, Mrs Little said she believed the killings must serve as an opportunity to eradicate shortcomings in the system.

"It has to be the result. If there is anything that is going to come out of this for us for our sanity and for the loss of mum and dad," she said.