LONDON: A lawyer injected food with syringes filled with his own blood in supermarkets in the British capital, a court has heard.
Leoaai Elghareeb, 37, threw blood-filled syringes and eggs in three supermarkets in west London on Aug. 25 last year. He also threw a syringe at a doctor.
The Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores were required to remove all their produce as a safety precaution, costing them nearly £500,000 ($679,000) in losses.
Prosecutor Philip Stott told Isleworth Crown Court that Elghareeb “is accused of doing two types of things: Firstly contaminating goods, and secondly assaulting two people, a Bilal Ansari and a Dr. Meghana Kulkarni.”
Elghareeb threw syringes at people and assaulted store workers who confronted him, the court was told.
He threw a syringe at Kulkarni’s chest. Stott said: “Fortunately the syringe had no needle attached to it, and it just bounced off her without causing any injuries.”
Elghareeb entered the Waitrose store and began frantically jabbing food with needles, including apples and chicken tikka filets.
The court was shown CCTV footage of him throwing syringes and injecting products for two minutes.
He did the same down the road at a Sainsbury’s Local, where he also fought with a security guard and threw an egg. Elghareeb then went to Tesco Express, where workers were forced to close the store.
During the deep cleaning, the three supermarkets recovered 21 syringes that he had thrown or used.
Elghareeb is denying the charges on account of being “in the legal sense, insane at the time.” The court heard that he was riddled with delusional thoughts and was regularly using crystal meth to self-medicate for his mental health problems.
Dr. Bradley Hillier, a psychiatrist and consultant in mental health to the UN, told the court she believed that Elghareeb suffers from psychosis, causing him to be separated from reality.
Hillier said brain scans revealed that drug use had caused a loss of brain cells, adding: “I don’t think he appreciated that he thought it was morally or legally wrong because he psychotically believed that he would get in touch with the real police who would help him to get this implant out of his brain.
“At that time, Mr Elghareeb was so out of touch with reality that I don’t think he would fully appreciate the consequences of those actions in those specific terms.”
